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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165626">The Transfiguration of the Soul</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren'>Lomonaaeren</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bullying, Canonical Child Abuse, Dark Harry Potter, Drama, Gen, Gore, Minor Character Death, Minor character suicide, Present Tense, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Torture, Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:55:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>33,216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165626</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is Sorted into Slytherin, and discovers that most of his yearmates seem to think he has some grand plan. Harry, fighting as hard as he can to hang on to his Gryffindor friends and his godfather, decides that if people like Draco Malfoy think he has a plan, then he’ll take advantage of that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy &amp; Harry Potter, Harry Potter &amp; Slytherin Students, Hermione Granger &amp; Harry Potter &amp; Ron Weasley, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sirius Black &amp; Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>From Samhain to the Solstice 2020 [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1569</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a side-story/Harry POV of my story “A Plan of Deepest Subtlety and Cunning.” Either can be read first. This should have four parts, to be posted over the next four days.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>Not Slytherin</em>,” Harry thinks back to the voice of the Sorting Hat when it speaks to him.</p><p>“<em>But you would do well there.</em>” The Hat’s voice is coaxing and sounds like Aunt Petunia does when she’s trying to get Dudley to wait for his sweets. “<em>You could make friends that would be loyal to you. You could transform yourself into a great person.</em>”</p><p>“<em>I don’t care. Not Slytherin.</em>”</p><p>There’s a long silence as the Sorting Hat seems to think about it. Then it says, “<em>You have a very strong will, and your determination to prove yourself as a good person, after your relatives called you a freak all your life, is your ambition.</em>”</p><p>“<em>No, don’t</em>—”</p><p>“SLYTHERIN!”</p><p>Harry tears the Hat from his head and flings it onto the stool. There’s a bit of quiet clapping, but not much. Harry can’t believe what’s going on. He’s on the verge of screaming or crying, even though he hasn’t cried since he was five years old.</p><p>Then he stares at Ron, who’s still waiting in line, and sees the way that Ron’s eyes are wide, but not turning away from him. Harry knows from the train ride that Ron really hates Slytherins. That doesn’t mean he has to hate <em>Harry, </em>though.</p><p>Harry jerks his head up. So that’s the way it’s going to be. He’s going to make sure that he can stay friends with Ron. And maybe that will be enough to fulfill the damn <em>ambition </em>that the Hat was going on about.</p><p>Or at least show the other Slytherins that it’s useless trying to force him to behave the way they do.</p><p>He walks over to the Slytherin table, where some people are staring at him like they’re dazed. He ends up not far from Malfoy, even though not sitting right next to him, because apparently there’s a section of the table where first-years are supposed to sit. Harry tries to ignore the stares from everyone and turns to watch Ron’s Sorting.</p><p>Of course, Malfoy has to interrupt before Ron gets to the Hat. “So are you regretting associating with the wrong sort yet, Potter?”</p><p>Harry stares at him, loathing the look on his face. Malfoy wants Harry to crawl and cringe at his feet, the way Dudley and Piers always wanted Harry to do.</p><p>
  <em>No. </em>
</p><p>“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry says. “I can still tell the wrong sort for myself, and Ron is <em>always </em>going to be my best friend.”</p><p>Malfoy’s jaw drops open a little, and the Parkinson girl who was Sorted not long before them gasps. Harry turns his back and watches as Ron sits under the Hat. It takes longer than Ron would probably prefer, but not <em>that </em>long, before the Hat barks, “GRYFFINDOR!”, and Ron runs over to the table where his brothers are waving their hands in the air.</p><p>Harry claps hard for him, and ignores the stares from his table. He goes on ignoring them as food appears and he starts eating. Malfoy is giving him some weird looks, but so what? Harry is practically an expert on living with weird looks.</p><p>And after the feast, he manages to catch Ron before the prefects can escort all the first-year students away. “Ron!” he calls.</p><p>Ron turns around, and his expression is less weird than Malfoy’s. Harry still stops a few feet away from him and jams his hands into his robe pockets, taking a deep breath.</p><p>“So,” Ron says. “Slytherin, huh?”</p><p>“I <em>told </em>the stupid Hat to put me in Gryffindor, but it didn’t listen,” Harry says.</p><p>Ron cracks a smile then. “I reckon it doesn’t often. Fred and George were saying that they tried to talk it into putting them in different Houses just for laughs, but it ignored them.”</p><p>Harry relaxes. It’s good to know that he’s not in some unique position where the Hat listens to everyone else but not Harry because he’s evil or something.</p><p>“Still friends?” Harry asks.</p><p>Ron snorts. “I reckon that you’ll need someone to keep you on track in the House of Snakes. Got to ensure that you don’t start looking down your nose at everybody, huh?”</p><p>Harry grins and starts to answer, but a cold voice behind him says, “Mr. <em>Potter, </em>if you <em>will</em>.”</p><p>Harry turns around and sees one of the professors from the Head Table in front of him, a tall, hook-nosed man with dark hair and eyes. He’s staring at Harry with such profound dislike that Harry feels that odd sense of familiarity again. If Vernon Dursley was a wizard, he’d be one like this.</p><p>Harry nods to Ron and follows the man until they join up with the line of Slytherin first-years, older students proceeding in front of them. The man pauses, and Harry glances at him as he falls into line behind Blaise Zabini, the last boy to be Sorted.</p><p>“I do not tolerate people who think they are <em>special </em>in my House,” the man says softly. “I am Professor Severus Snape, Potions master at Hogwarts and Head of Slytherin House, and the moment I hear that you’ve played a prank on another student or cost the House points, I will have you in detention the rest of the <em>year.</em> Do you understand me, Mr. Potter?”</p><p>“Perfectly, sir,” Harry says. And he does. Uncle Vernon always hated him for stupid reasons, too.</p><p>Snape lifts an eyebrow at him and sweeps away. Harry walks towards the Slytherin common room, which, it turns out, is in the dungeons. Harry knows from what Ron said that Gryffindor Tower is in actually open air and has lots of cheerful red-and-gold decorations in it.</p><p>Harry keeps his thoughts to himself. He can endure.</p><p>He has a friend now, and that’s worth <em>anything.</em></p><p>*</p><p>“Harry, you have to tell Professor Snape about this.”</p><p>Harry snorts at Hermione and drops his books on the library table. “He knows, Hermione.”</p><p>Hermione stares at him, perfectly scandalized. Harry became friends with her after he and Ron helped save her from a troll (who found her in the first place because Ron acted like a prat, but at least Ron can admit it when he does, which is more than Harry can say for Malfoy or Nott). “He—knows that other Slytherins are bullying you?”</p><p>Harry nods briskly and spreads out his parchment across the books. The bruise on his shoulder where Flint punched him twinges. “I told him the first time Warrington strung me up by the heels in the common room. I actually thought he would do something. He said that Slytherins protect each other and all that rot, you know? But it turns out that he hates me too much to protect me from <em>them.</em>”</p><p>“But you can’t just let them bully you!” Hermione is quivering, outraged. Harry smiles at her. It’s still wondrous to him that he has friends who like him enough to get <em>upset </em>when someone treats him like shit.</p><p>“I know. I have a plan.”</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>Harry lifts the book that he’s taken out from the shelves, and Hermione’s eyes widen as she reads the title. Then she gnaws her lip. “But if Professor Snape likes the other students sand doesn’t like you…”</p><p>“I know,” Harry says. “But I can’t do anything about Snape’s attitude towards me.” He knows that, from two months of brewing nearly perfect potions and receiving Trolls for them. “I’ll get detention anyway. I’ll take stopping Flint and the like from being bullies.”</p><p>“You know,” Ron offers, “the twins like you a lot, mate. They’d handle Flint and the others if you let them.”</p><p>It’s tempting, but Harry shakes his head. “Thanks, Ron, but they’d just think it was the twins being the twins. I have to handle them on my own so they know not to mess with me.”</p><p>“Can you even manage the spells in that book?” Hermione asks.</p><p>Harry smiles, and knows it’s a little twisted from the way Hermione flinches back from him. Still, he doesn’t care. “I’m going to work until I can. And then, the next time Flint tries to punch me or Warrington tries to string me up, they’ll get a nasty surprise.” He’s already learned the <em>Reparo </em>Charm pretty well because of the way that Crabbe and Goyle like to shred his robes and books.</p><p>He’ll just learn some more.</p><p>*</p><p>It’s not two days after Harry masters the last of the curses he wanted to learn that Flint tries to start something else up in the common room. Harry’s copying the last quote he wants from his Herbology book for his essay when the Quidditch Captain tries to snatch it away.</p><p>Harry leans his elbow hard on the book, and it only tears a little along the edge of a page. Harry then leans back and stares at Flint, who sneers at him and looks around as if to make sure everyone is watching.</p><p>Harry hopes everyone is. He really hopes so.</p><p>“Little Potty should have been a Gryffindor.” Flint spins his wand between his fingers and puts it away a second later. “I don’t waste my magic on Mudblood Gryffindors. Let me have the book, little Potty, or I’ll punch you so hard they’re going to be finding your teeth in the corners <em>years </em>from now.”</p><p>Harry feels a thrill of the fear that he usually feels with Dudley, but honestly, at this point? The cold rage that’s been building in him for months, ever since he realized that no one in Slytherin is going to stand up for him, is a lot stronger.</p><p>“Fuck off, Flint,” he says.</p><p>The common room freezes as it seems like half the people in it stop breathing. Flint blinks as if he needs time to understand the words. With how stupid he is, Harry wouldn’t be surprised.</p><p>“Are you—you’re <em>insulting </em>me?”</p><p>“No,” Harry says, leaning forwards a little. His wand is up his sleeve, but close enough to his hand that Harry knows he can use it without a problem. “I’m telling you to fuck off.” He adds a smile to complete the picture.</p><p>Out of the corner of his eye, Harry can see Malfoy staring at him. Malfoy has been consistently strange since the Sorting, acting as if he thinks Harry is some kind of genius but also participating in taunting him. Harry supposes this will only make Malfoy think he’s an idiot.</p><p>That’s fine. Harry will take all the detentions and the false thoughts people have about him if the bullying stops.</p><p>“That’s <em>it</em>, Potter,” Flint snarls, and steps forwards.</p><p>Harry lifts his wand. “<em>Pellis ignis</em>,” he says softly. He’s only tried casting this on himself so far, and then only on a small area, but he knows very well how painful it is. And he hates Flint so much right now that he doesn’t think he’s going to have much trouble hurting him on a larger scale.</p><p>Flint screams and begins to claw at his skin. Harry smiles. The other Slytherins are staring in confusion. Harry is the only one who knows that Flint’s skin has caught fire on the <em>inside, </em>not the outside.</p><p>“Stop it, Potter! Stop it!” Flint howls, hopping up and down.</p><p>“Why should I?” Harry smiles at him and stands up. Zabini, who was sitting in the chair closest to Harry, scrambles back. Harry takes a step towards Flint. “You’ll only bully me no matter what I do. Why shouldn’t I just let you die? It’s not going to make my life any more miserable one way or the other, right?”</p><p>“Potter—Potter, I swear—” Flint’s words trail off into a scream.</p><p>“What was that, Flint? I don’t think I heard you.”</p><p>“I’ll—I’ll never bully you again! Never hurt you! Make it <em>stop</em>!”</p><p>Flint’s nails have scratched through enough skin on his arms now to reveal blood. Harry considers it for a second, and then shrugs and says in a cheerful voice, “<em>Finite Incatatem.</em>”</p><p>Flint collapses on his back and moans steadily for a second. Then he gets up and runs towards his bedroom.</p><p>Harry glances around at the his Housemates. They stare with wide eyes, and then they universally turn away and pretend to be busy with homework or gossip.</p><p>Hmmm. That’s a better reaction than Harry expected. He thought someone would run and tell Snape on him.</p><p>Maybe that’ll happen later and they just don’t want to attract his attention. Harry is prepared to put up with the detentions, the way he told Hermione and Ron he would. For now, it’s enough that he can sit down and finish his Herbology essay.</p><p>*</p><p>“I don’t understand why Flint was the one to suggest that you join the Slytherin Quidditch team.” Ron frowns and leans on the doorframe as he watches Harry shrug out of the green team robes. “Wasn’t he bullying you pretty mercilessly a little while ago?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Harry shoots a quick smile at Ron. “But I think he saw the error of his ways.”</p><p>In truth, Harry doesn’t know why Flint pushed Snape into allowing Harry to join the Quidditch team, either. He supposes it’s some twisted form of apology for the bullying, as well as insurance that Harry will think well of Flint and not cast another curse on him.</p><p>Harry never <em>did </em>get detention with Snape for cursing Flint, because no one who was in the common room apparently went and told Snape anything. That surprises Harry a little, but when he thinks it over in more detail, he can understand. To know that a first-year student had the power to cast a curse like that—and the will to do it—probably shocked the hell out of them. So they backed off and are watching him cautiously to see what he’ll do next.</p><p>Harry has no idea of doing anything “next” if they leave him alone. He’s not sure he can convince the other Slytherins of that, though.</p><p>Well, he doesn’t need to. He has no friends in his House, but he doesn’t need any. He has Ron and Hermione, and that’s enough. Sure, he has no adult he can depend on like Ron and Hermione can depend on Professor McGonagall, either, but so what? <em>That </em>situation isn’t new in his life.</p><p>*</p><p>“I think Professor Quirrell is the one trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone.”</p><p>That theory made no sense to Harry when Hermione first came up with it—why would it, when Professor Quirrell is so bumbling and ineffective? But then he came to understand what Hermione meant. She’d watched Quirrell, and she’d noticed how he would sometimes forget to stutter, and how he cast spells fluidly and never stuttered on the incantations, and how much more time he spent on the staircases leading to the third floor on the right-hand side than anyone should have to.</p><p>Harry is curled up on a chair near the fire in the Slytherin common room with a book on the Philosopher’s Stone. Nott is sitting not far away from him. That’s not unusual nowadays, because Malfoy has taken to spending more time around Harry, and Nott’s always close to Malfoy.</p><p>Harry supposes there’s some sort of political alliance at work there, but honestly, he doesn’t care enough about his Housemates to pay attention to it.</p><p>“What are you reading, Potter?”</p><p>Harry glances up at Malfoy. The question’s neutral enough, so he answers it neutrally. “A book about the Philosopher’s Stone.”</p><p>Malfoy sits up and exchanges a significant look with Nott. Harry shakes his wand into his sleeve. Significant looks are bad for him when it comes to other Slytherins. (He never thinks of them as <em>fellow </em>Slytherins. As far as he’s concerned, most of the actions he’s taken since his Sorting, including spending as much of his free time as possible with Ron and Hermione, are in protest of that stupid Hat’s stupid decision).</p><p>“Didn’t I tell you?” Malfoy appears to be mouthing at Nott.</p><p>Harry narrows his eyes. “You know about the Philosopher’s Stone being hidden here, too?”</p><p>Malfoy jolts and faces him. “What are you on about?”</p><p><em>Shit. </em>Malfoy probably didn’t. He wasn’t just speaking to Nott about something else, probably Harry’s idiocy or something, and then Harry’s real idiocy came out and ruined everything.</p><p>“Nothing,” Harry does try to say, and goes back to his book.</p><p>“No,” Malfoy insists, leaning forwards. At least he keeps his voice low, and it’s early on Saturday morning, so not many other people are awake yet. “I want to know what you meant about the Philosopher’s Stone being <em>here.</em>”</p><p>Harry studies Malfoy and then Nott. Nott looks less interested, but Nott has that down to a perfect mask. Harry knows who spreads most of the gossip in Slytherin House, even if he doesn’t appear to on the surface.</p><p>“Fine,” Harry says, and prepares to manipulate them in the easiest way there is to manipulate a Slytherin. “But this is a secret, and if I know that you’ve taken it to Snape or an older student, I won’t involve you in my secrets again.”</p><p>“We can keep secrets, Potter.”</p><p>Malfoy looks eager as he says it. Harry eyes Nott. Nott nods and holds up one hand. “I’ll put a privacy charm around us and take an oath on it.”</p><p>That’s the longest sentence Nott’s ever said to him, so Harry’s inclined to trust him. He doesn’t have much of a choice, anyway. He watches as Nott traces his wand and mutters some words that he keeps too low for Harry to hear, but Harry doesn’t care. He’ll go and look up privacy charms after this.</p><p>“The thing that’s hidden in the school, in the third-floor corridor, is the Philosopher’s Stone,” Harry says. “And you know what the Weasley twins were saying about a three-headed dog in the school? Yeah, that’s true. I’ve seen it.”</p><p>“How can you trust anything the <em>Weasley </em>twins say?” Draco interrupts.</p><p>“He just said he saw it, Draco.”</p><p>Nott’s voice is measured. Harry meets his eyes, and since Nott is looking at him behind Malfoy’s back, they exchange their first ever look of sympathy. Sometimes Malfoy is a bloody idiot, and they both know it.</p><p>“Yeah.” Harry nods. “And anyway, I heard from the person who placed the Philosopher’s Stone in the school that it had something to do with Nicholas Flamel.” He thinks about mentioning his Invisibility Cloak and the Mirror of Erised, but frankly, he doesn’t want to tell anyone about his interactions with Dumbledore or what he saw in the mirror. “Who’s the inventor of the Philosopher’s Stone.” He lifts the book. “Hermione thinks Professor Quirrell is trying to steal it, and he unleashed the troll in the school on Halloween—”</p><p>“Wait, <em>Granger </em>thinks this?” Nott is the one to interrupt this time.</p><p>Harry blinks at him. “Yes. She’s analyzed his stuttering and his casting patterns, and—”</p><p>“I take it back,” Nott says. “I don’t have any interest in anything that a Mudblood came up with.” He takes down the privacy charm with a savage “<em>Finite</em>,” and then gets up and stalks away from Harry and Malfoy.</p><p>Harry looks at Malfoy. “And you?”</p><p>Malfoy wavers for a bit, then draws himself up and says, “I know about your plan.”</p><p>Harry tenses. “What plan?” It’s true that he and Ron and Hermione are trying to come up with a way to stop Professor Quirrell, but they don’t have anything definite yet.</p><p>Malfoy stares at him. “Your political plan. Where you knew that you would be Sorted into Slytherin and people would hate you for that, so you maintained your cover story as a non-Dark wizard by staying friends with a Gryffindor student and then befriending a Mudblood.”</p><p>Harry can only blink at him, wordless.</p><p>Malfoy taps his nose wisely. “I know about it, but I’m not going to betray it,” he says, standing up and winking at Harry. “Remember that you have someone on your side when you’re ready to become the Dark Lord’s lieutenant, though.”</p><p>He walks away, and Harry stares in silence at his departing back.</p><p>Well. Harry made a stupid mistake, but because his Housemates are also stupid, nothing bad happened because of it.</p><p><em>Maybe the Hat Sorts based on relative levels of intelligence, </em>Harry decides, and goes back to his book.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry lies huddled in his bed in the hospital wing, staring at his bandaged hands. Hermione was right, horribly right, about Professor Quirrell being the one who was out to steal the Philosopher’s Stone, but wrong about the <em>reason </em>he was stealing it. She thought he just wanted to be immortal and have all the wealth in the world.</p><p>Not that Lord Voldemort was here.</p><p>Harry clenches his hands, and feels his chest burn with a lot more than the disgusting-tasting potion Madam Pomfrey forced down his throat.</p><p>He remembers the cold rage that made him curse Flint, and the contempt he feels when he brews good potions and Snape marks them down, or when Snape refused to believe him about the other Slytherins bullying him. But nothing has ever compared to the hatred he feels for Voldemort.</p><p>Harry wants to <em>destroy </em>him. Not just curse him. Not just make him go away for a little while, or shut up. <em>Destroy </em>him.</p><p>He can’t say that to anyone in his life. Ron and Hermione would understand the motive of revenge, but this is beyond that. Harry doesn’t think his friends really hate anyone or anything. He only <em>thought </em>Ron hated Slytherins. Ron got beyond that easily enough once he realized that Harry was still the boy he met on the train, and a stupid snake crest didn’t mean anything.</p><p>The other Slytherins are a shallow lot. They might understand hatred, but not hatred of someone who’s as powerful as Voldemort. It’s of a piece with Malfoy thinking that Harry wants to become the Dark Lord’s lieutenant. You follow someone powerful and try to take advantage of what their power can give you. Or you cringe in front of them and hope they won’t notice you. You don’t <em>fight </em>them.</p><p>Harry is going to.</p><p>He lies back with his eyes closed, and starts to plan about what kind of spells and magic he’s going to study to destroy Lord Bloody Voldemort in the future.</p><p>*</p><p>Of all the pieces of magic he could learn, Harry never thought that it was something he already knew how to do—speaking to snakes—that would be the most powerful one.</p><p>Oh, at first it’s not. After he speaks to the snake in the Great Hall during Lockhart’s ridiculous dueling club, the rest of his House, and a lot of the rest of the school, accuse him of being the Heir of Slytherin. Several of his Housemates, including Malfoy, tell him that he’s obviously the Heir because Slytherin was a Parselmouth, and so is he.</p><p>Harry leaves the common room in disgust after the latest unproductive discussion and starts walking to the library, where he’s going to meet up with Ron and Hermione. He’s aware before he’s gone more than a corridor that someone is following him.</p><p>He turns around and sees that it’s Millicent Bulstrode. She’s another of the quiet Slytherins, like Nott, although Nott has been more talkative this year and prone to staring weirdly at Harry like Malfoy does.</p><p>“What are you going to do?” Harry snaps at her. He’s sick of Slytherin company and wants to be with his <em>real </em>friends. “Tell me I’m lying, too?”</p><p>Bulstrode scoffs. “Please. Like you’d risk Petrifying Muggleborns when one of your best friends is a Muggleborn.”</p><p>Harry stares at her. It’s unusual enough that she uses the real word instead of “Mudblood.” He wonders what she wants, because he’s no longer naïve enough to think that any Slytherin would befriend him simply to befriend him.</p><p>It’s easy enough to figure out, from the greedy way she studies him. She thinks he has power. She wants to be close to it. And she’s figured out that telling him to his face that he’s the Heir won’t get her there, so she’s pretending to believe him.</p><p>Part of Harry turns to cold crystal. She wants to be close to power? Fine. She wants to use him? Fine. He’ll use her.</p><p>“Well,” Harry says, playing along, “I could use someone in my own House who believes in me.”</p><p>“Fine, Potter.” Bulstrode is beaming at him. “Let’s go to the library and stay away from the unintelligent ones for a little while.”</p><p>“Call me Harry,” Harry says. He knows Ron and Hermione won’t approve if they know of his plan to use Bulstrode. That means he has to treat her more like a friend, and friends means first names.</p><p>“Millicent, then.”</p><p>Harry nods, and Millicent follows him. Harry makes small talk with her as they walk along. She can talk Potions and Defense, and she thinks Lockhart is an idiot, which does cause him to place her in a category a few levels higher in intelligence than some of the girls who swoon over their Defense “professor.”</p><p>It’s not enough to make Harry <em>trust </em>her. But he understands her. She wants to be close to him because of his Parseltongue, because to her he’s the Heir of Slytherin, and she’ll be reliable as long as she thinks that someday he’ll reveal his power and make it shine on her.</p><p>Ron and Hermione are a little harder to persuade, but Hermione warms up to Millicent when she proves she knows a lot about Potions, and Ron relaxes when Millicent says that she doesn’t think Harry is behind the Petrifications.</p><p>It’s all sort of fake, but Harry is the only one who knows that, which means it goes smoothly enough.</p><p>That’s the first gift his Parseltongue gives him.</p><p>*</p><p>The second arrives on a night in the common room when Harry, who fell asleep earlier and didn’t finish his Potions essay, is alone and scribbling away on it. It’s nearly midnight. Even the older students who like to study here have gone up to bed.</p><p>It’s oddly peaceful, with the fire crackling on the hearth, and the portrait of a green jungle snake of some kind right above him, hissing softly.</p><p>“…<em>good to have a Speaker in the House…</em>”</p><p>Harry pauses and looks up at the serpent. It flickers its tongue out at him and comes to the edge of the portrait, practically begging to be noticed. Harry has sometimes heard an intelligible hiss from the portraits and snake statues or carvings in the common room, but he hasn’t paid much attention. None of them have ever sounded as if they were talking about <em>him</em>, the way this one is.</p><p>“<em>You know I speak Parseltongue</em>?” Harry asks, after a check over his shoulder to make sure that no one’s come down the stairs and Snape hasn’t swept in the door like an overgrown bat.</p><p>“<em>All snakes know of the Speaker.</em>” The snake dances back and forth. Now that it’s close, Harry can see that it has bright green eyes, and there are flecks of gold in its scales. Not that that helps him identify it. He really doesn’t know very much about snakes. “<em>Very few have come here since the Great One vanished.</em>” Harry supposes Slytherin himself must be the Great One. “<em>We are lonely. We were made for a purpose, and we cannot fulfill it without a Speaker.</em>”</p><p>Harry blinks. If anything, he would have thought the snakes were made to guard the common room in case someone from another House tried to come in. That seems like something they should be able to do regardless if someone is talking to them or not.</p><p>“<em>What is your purpose, beautiful one?</em>” Harry reckons a little flattery can’t hurt.</p><p>The serpent turns its head upside-down and weaves through its own coils in excitement. “<em>To help the Speakers. We are not like other snakes. We can hear the humans, and we can remember what they say. We can go many places, in portraits and through the tunnels, and we can hear and report back. Use us, Speaker! Guide us! Permit us to listen for you</em>!”</p><p>Harry feels his mouth fall open, and he give a rapid blink. That never occurred to him, although he supposes it should have. The little he’s managed to find on Slytherin since he started researching Parseltongue has revealed that the Founder was a paranoid git.</p><p>“<em>And you would report to me and me alone</em>?” Harry asks. The second thing his mind has jumped to, after how useful it would be, is what would happen if Voldemort came back to the school and questioned the snakes. He must have used them when he was here. “<em>Not to anyone else</em>?”</p><p>“<em>You are the Speaker. You are in our House. You speak our noble tongue. You are the one who is here and to be helped.</em>”</p><p>Harry doesn’t know all the nuances of that, but he does think that it probably matters to the snakes that he’s a student. And Voldemort’s not. Even if he came back, he would probably have to take over the school.</p><p>And if he did, then Harry would have a lot bigger problems than Voldemort’s access to the snake portraits.</p><p>“<em>I will have to make sure that we have a private point for you to speak to me,</em>” Harry murmurs, half to himself.</p><p>“<em>There is a private place,</em>” the snake in the portrait responds instantly. “<em>A place with a blank canvas where such as I can gather, and secret small tunnels in the walls that the carvings and stone ones can crawl down.</em>” The snake sounds as though it’s a hiss away from calling the carvings and stone snakes idiots, but doesn’t actually do so. “<em>Come to it, and we will come to you when we have reports.</em>”</p><p>Harry smiles. “<em>Can you show me</em>?”</p><p>It turns out that he’ll have to leave the common room, so he goes and gets his Invisibility Cloak first. Most of the Slytherins believe that Snape has some kind of spells on the common room door that alert him when a student leaves after curfew, but Harry has been in and out enough times by now to know that’s bollocks.</p><p>Or perhaps Snape disabled them when a Potter became a Slytherin, the same way that he decided to ignore the rule “Slytherins guard each other’s backs” when it came to Harry. Harry wouldn’t put it past him. Snape might be a good Head of House for some of the Slytherins, but he’s a useless prick as far as Harry’s concerned.</p><p>Harry walks down the corridor to the left of the common room door, following the snake’s instructions, and around a few corners before he comes to a seemingly blank stretch of wall with a small serpentine shape carved into it. It’s so old, and so worn away by the centuries, that Harry wouldn’t have seen it if he wasn’t specifically looking at it. He supposes that helps to keep it as secret as Parseltongue being rare.</p><p>He places his hand over it now, and feels a spark leap from it. The snake carving twists, coming out of the wall and becoming much more visible, and bares its fangs a breath from his hand.</p><p>Harry meets its eyes, which are deep-sunken little red gems. “<em>Room of the Spies,</em>” he says in Parseltongue.</p><p>The carving swings back into the wall, and a hairline-thin crack runs away from it, outlining a door. Harry pushes it open and steps inside, removing the Cloak as he does so.</p><p>It’s a large room with darkness and dust everywhere. Harry lights a <em>Lumos </em>Charm, and sees the large blank canvas on the wall, as promised, along with several wooden chairs and a couch that appears to have long-moldered cushions on it. Torch sconces line the walls.</p><p>But the canvas isn’t actually blank. A writhing mass of serpents crowds it, black and red and green and golden, large and small, constrictors and cobras and all sorts of other serpents Harry doesn’t know, with his informant from the common room curled at the top. The backs of the chairs, and the legs, and the arms, are alive with snake carvings turning to look at him. The torch sconces aren’t lit, but <em>are </em>covered with stone snakes, practically dripping with them.</p><p>As Harry watches, a small hinged flap opens in the wall under the canvas, and a glittering black <em>live </em>snake slithers in. Harry stiffens, his hand darting to his wand.</p><p>But the black snake curls in a circle and says, “<em>Welcome, Speaker. We will listen for you.</em>”</p><p>A chorus of hisses rises from all the others, and one of them says, “<em>Tell us who to report on.</em>”</p><p>“<em>Tell us</em>!” say the snakes in the portrait.</p><p>“<em>Command us</em>!” say the carvings on the chairs.</p><p>“<em>Use us</em>!” say the stone snakes on the torch sconces.</p><p>Harry feels a rush of power and happiness that so far has only struck him when he’s flying, and he laughs and extends his hand. The black snake promptly slides forwards and loops its way around his arm, tongue darting out.</p><p>He <em>can </em>protect himself with a gift like this, Harry thinks, staring around. Against students who want to bully him. Against whoever the real Heir of Slytherin Petrifying people is. Against the adults like Snape, and like Dumbledore, who refused to give him any <em>real </em>information last year about why Voldemort attacked his parents in the first place.</p><p>Harry laughs again, and the snakes’ hisses echo him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry learns so many <em>interesting </em>things from the snakes.</p><p>For example, he learns that Snape and Dumbledore have regular meetings. About him. They don’t seem to know what to make of him. According to Snape, he should be playing pranks and swaggering around the school like his father. According to Dumbledore, he should be acting more like a Slytherin if he was Sorted into that House.</p><p>Then they seem to notice that he’s regularly spending time with Millicent, and Dumbledore’s tune changes. Now he’s being corrupted by Millicent, and corrupting Ron and Hermione.</p><p>Ron and Hermione are <em>good</em> Gryffindors, of course. There’s no way that they could be true friends with a Slytherin.</p><p>Snape leaps to the defense of Millicent, but not of Harry. Harry has to sort of admire the way he does it, as he leans back on the couch in the secret room and listening to the snakes’ rendition of the words. (The snakes can’t do human tones of voice, so Harry has to imagine that, but he’s got pretty good at it). Somehow, Snape manages to wriggle around the main issue, that Harry is also a Slytherin, and claim that Millicent is only associating with him out of pity and kindness, while Ron and Hermione are naïve fools who can’t see the glory-seeking, prank-playing Harry Potter.</p><p>Harry smiles. He has to wonder what Snape would say if he knew that Harry <em>is </em>playing pranks on him. Just not the kind he was watching for.</p><p>When Harry can use stone snakes to break open the locks on Snape’s Potions cupboards, go in and take what ingredients he wants, and then hang the lock back almost invisibly, that’s better than any silly jinx or charm any day of the week. Snape also has to keep buying new locks, and setting new alarms that go off harmlessly on the stone of Harry’s servants—or not at all, given that they’re searching for humans.</p><p>*</p><p>“You can tell me, you know,” Millicent whispers coaxingly one night as they sit near the fire, under the portrait of the jungle snake.</p><p>Harry glances up at her, and catches Malfoy’s eye just in time to see him turn hastily away. Harry snorts to himself. Malfoy and Nott are always there lately, lurking about. But since they don’t talk to him except to accuse him of being the Heir of Slytherin, Harry has mostly been ignoring them.</p><p>“Tell you what?” Harry asks Millicent, not worried about being overheard. He did look up privacy charms after he saw Nott perform that one last year, and he’s pretty good at them by now.</p><p>“About how you keep breaking into the Potions storage cupboards without getting caught.”</p><p>Harry’s eyes widen before he can stop himself. He’s still not as good at controlling his facial expressions as he wants to be. Needs to be. “That’s not me. You know that Snape would put me in detention forever if he had proof.”</p><p>“But I know it <em>has </em>to be.” Millicent’s eyes shine as she leans forwards. “I <em>know</em>.”</p><p>“Why? Just taking Snape’s prejudices to heart, are you?”</p><p>“Because you’re the only one powerful and clever enough to get away with <em>constantly </em>breaking in and not getting caught! He even catches the Weasley twins.” Millicent’s hand creeps towards him, but she doesn’t touch him, just letting her hand linger on the arm of the chair. “Please tell me, Harry?”</p><p>Harry studies her, his eyes half-lidded. He hasn’t told Ron and Hermione about the snakes, which means he certainly won’t tell her. But he can give her some sort of clue to remain intrigued and useful to him.</p><p>He smiles. “You know how Snape always assumes I’ll play pranks because he believes I’m exactly like my father?”</p><p>Millicent rolls her eyes. “Yes, of course I know. Which is ridiculous. You can’t even <em>remember </em>your father, how can you be like him?”</p><p>Harry blinks, caught off-guard. That sounded…sincere. It makes him wonder if perhaps Millicent is more capable of independent thought, more capable of really being a friend, than he assumed.</p><p>But it doesn’t change his immediate plan. Harry looks at her, winks, and says, “What would you say if I told you that I could persuade <em>other </em>people to play those kinds of pranks? So that I needn’t ever be caught?”</p><p>Millicent stares at him, and Nott and Malfoy shift closer, probably intrigued by the expression on her face. It doesn’t matter, since they can’t hear anything from beyond the privacy charm. Harry gives them a smile that makes them look away.</p><p>“You mean—you’re getting the Weasley twins and other people to do it for you? But then, why isn’t Snape catching <em>them</em>?”</p><p>“It might not be the Weasley twins. You don’t know how far my power extends, Millicent.”</p><p>“But I want to,” Millicent almost whines, before she catches herself and flushes. “All right, I’ll think about it. Are there any other clues that you can give me?”</p><p>“I have some around me who aren’t exactly friends, but will still do as I ask,” Harry says.</p><p>Millicent’s eyes visibly almost cross as she mentally pursues that. Harry smiles a little. She probably thinks that he’s casting the Imperius Curse on someone.</p><p>It doesn’t matter. As long as there’s no proof. As long as she still doesn’t betray the few secrets of his she’s been permitted to learn.</p><p>As long as she respects his power.</p><p>*</p><p>The snakes tell him about more interesting things than just the meetings Snape and Dumbledore have in Dumbledore’s office—surrounded by portraits that they never notice are sometimes replaced by snakes when the human ones go wandering and leave an empty frame—and one of those interesting things means that Harry is lingering near the second-floor girls’ bathroom on a morning near the end of term.</p><p>There hadn’t been any Petrifications in the last little while. But now both Penelope Clearwater and Hermione have been Petrified.</p><p>And Hermione is his <em>friend.</em></p><p>Harry is a little startled at how strongly he feels that. Yes, there are things he doesn’t tell Hermione, like how he cursed Flint; he just told her the situation got handled. He hasn’t told her about the snakes who serve him. He hasn’t told her about how much Snape hates him.</p><p>But then, he hasn’t told <em>anyone </em>about the snakes. And Snape’s hatred is such an accepted thing in Slytherin House that they don’t really discuss it with him, either.</p><p>Harry feels alone so much of the time that he accepted his friendships would always be shallow, in a way that they might not have been if he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor. But this friendship is strong enough that his first impulse when he saw Hermione lying so still on the bed in the hospital wing was an intense, overpowering rage.</p><p>And now the snakes have told him about the snake on the faucet in this bathroom, and how there has been a red-haired girl coming in here often. They didn’t tell him before because they didn’t think it was interesting enough. Humans are always doing strange things in bathrooms, they told Harry when he asked.</p><p>Harry draws back under the Invisibility Cloak when the girl walks into the bathroom. The minute he sees her face, he recognizes her, Ron’s little sister. Ginny. He supposes he should have known before. There just aren’t that many students in the school with red hair.</p><p>But something’s <em>wrong </em>with Ginny. She walks stiffly, and she has glazed eyes. She walks straight up to the sink and <em>hisses </em>it open. And Harry has a certainty as strong as rocks that she doesn’t naturally speak Parseltongue.</p><p>The sink slides back with a grinding sound, and Ginny jumps down the black hole that’s revealed without a backwards glance. Harry casts a Lightening Charm on himself that will let him float down the distance, and follows her before the sink can close.</p><p>When it does, it’s very dark in the tunnel, and there’s a terrible smell rising up to greet him. Harry holds his breath as much as possible as he floats down after Ginny. Since she’s sliding, she goes a lot faster, but she’s not out of sight when he reaches the floor of a tunnel littered with small animal bones.</p><p>And the shed skin of an enormous snake.</p><p>Harry feels his body tense. He knows a lot more about snakes now than he did near the beginning of the year when the jungle serpent approached him. This is a basilisk. There is no other snake so large.</p><p>It makes sense of the Petrifications, too. There was always a mirror or a camera or something similar around, so no one met the basilisk’s eyes directly. Or they were already dead, like the Gryffindor ghost.</p><p>Harry follows Ginny grimly, his wand sliding into his hand as he does. She strides along, more like an adult or at least an older student than one who’s really her age, until she comes to a pair of stone doors with an enormous pair of serpents on them. She speaks to them in Parseltongue, saying only, “<em>Open.</em>”</p><p>Harry rolls his eyes. So this is the legendary Chamber of Secrets? Slytherin was simultaneously pretentious and not cunning enough.</p><p><em>Maybe the Hat Sorts us based on the </em>Founders’ <em>relative level of intelligence. </em></p><p>When they come into the Chamber, Harry only feels more convinced of that. There’s water everywhere, and snake decorations, and a huge <em>statue </em>of Slytherin. Harry just stares at it. Who would build a huge show-off statue, and then put it in a place where only a few people would ever see it?</p><p>It gets harder and harder for him to hear the snakes call Slytherin “the Great One” every day.</p><p>Ginny doesn’t do anything special, however. Instead, she just folds over on the floor. Harry moves cautiously closer, making sure the Cloak covers every inch of him. He sees a little black book lying next to her, and the book is <em>glowing, </em>a figure slowly rising from within it.</p><p>The snakes were wrong. This is the most interesting thing anyone has done in the school all year.</p><p>
  <em>Terrifying. But interesting.</em>
</p><p>As Harry watches, the figure becomes more and more solid. He’s a black-haired boy with dark eyes, and handsome, Harry supposes, if you like that sort of thing. He’s wearing Slytherin robes, the only part that isn’t a surprise. He steps back from the book as he gets clearer, and stands watching Ginny with the expression of someone watching an experiment.</p><p>Harry doesn’t know who he is. But he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t want that figure to form fully. Ginny was possessed, or maybe under the Imperius. <em>She </em>didn’t turn the basilisk loose on the school.</p><p>Harry skirts closer and closer. When he’s almost there, the boy raises his head. His eyes sweep over the place where Harry is without stopping, but he hisses in Parseltongue, “<em>Who’s there</em>?”</p><p>Harry times it just right, and springs forwards, seizing the book, which snaps shut. He retreats to a safe distance and flings the hood of the Cloak back.</p><p>The boy doesn’t stop solidifying, though. He just gives a slight start, and then stares at Harry. Ginny’s face is visibly getting paler, and her breathing is slowing down.</p><p>“Who are you?” Harry demands.</p><p>“Tom Marvolo Riddle, at your service,” says the boy, with a bow that Harry could call polite if he didn’t see into those furious eyes. “I suppose you don’t know who I am?” His voice gets intense at the end.</p><p>“The one who’s been setting the basilisk loose, I’m pretty sure. Heir of Slytherin.”</p><p>Riddle’s face twists into a snarl. Then he smooths it out, but too fast for it to be natural. Harry knows the kind of person he’s dealing with now—a much more dangerous version of Dudley. Dudley is good at concealing his real emotions like that, too fast, where adults other than his parents are there to see him.</p><p>“And who are you, if not a fellow Heir of Slytherin?” Riddle whispers. “If not the person little Ginny has been writing in my diary about all year? Harry Potter.” His gaze traces back and forth as if trying to outline Harry’s body, which he still can’t see. “You should <em>support </em>what I’m doing, not oppose it.”</p><p>“No,” Harry says. “Not when you possess people and hurt my friends.”</p><p>“A true Heir of Slytherin <em>has </em>no friends.” But Riddle’s voice is soft and weirdly distracted, and his eyes have gone so wide that Harry has to resist with all his might the temptation to look behind him. “What—what <em>are </em>you?”</p><p>Harry doesn’t bother answering. He doesn’t think he knows the answer anyway. He drops the book on the floor and aims his wand at it.</p><p>“<em>Incendio</em>!”</p><p>The fire sparks out and doesn’t do anything to the book. Harry doesn’t think it’s because he’s just a second-year, either. He’s used that spell to destroy parchments and robes by now. He tries it one more time, and the same thing happens.</p><p>“You can’t destroy my diary,” Riddle whispers, and smiles, before continuing in Parseltongue. “<em>I am a memory called a Horcrux, preserved in a diary for fifty years. A piece of the greater soul, the greater being that is Lord Voldemort.</em>”</p><p>Harry feels cold sweat spring out on his body, soaking him under the robes. But he also feels the hatred that he discovered for Voldemort last year rise up, and he knows he’s going to do his best to destroy both Riddle and the diary.</p><p>“<em>And you? You are a weak thing, hardly a fitting victim even of the basilisk. But what must be done will be done.</em>” Riddle whirls around and faces the statue of Slytherin. “<em>Speak to me, greatest of the Hogwarts four</em>!”</p><p>Harry doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but when the statue starts to open and reveal a long tunnel, he has a good idea. He ducks his head and vanishes under the Invisibility Cloak, although he knows the basilisk can still use scent to find him. Then he hisses, “<em>Come to me, servants of the Great One</em>!”</p><p>Riddle looks towards him, eyes hard and speculative, but then laughs as an enormous shadow slides out of the tunnel. “<em>Good-bye, Harry Potter.</em>”</p><p>Harry can hear the grind and glide of real scales on the stone, but he can also hear the stone snakes on the decorative pillars climbing down towards him. They pool around his feet, hissing inquiries.</p><p>Harry gestures towards the basilisk as it comes fully out of the tunnel. “<em>Delay it! Blind it</em>!”</p><p>The stone snakes swarm the basilisk, ignoring Riddle hissing—screaming—for them to stop. They don’t obey someone who isn’t really a student, then. Harry has never been so glad to be right, even though he never wanted to test the theory under battlefield conditions.</p><p>The basilisk shrugs off the stone snakes, but they climb up again, and the basilisk is delayed by its need to keep darting its tongue out and scenting Harry as he dodges wildly around the Chamber. Riddle laughs and calls instructions to the basilisk now and then, seemingly confident in Harry’s inability to escape.</p><p>Harry does think, briefly, about running back down the tunnel and trying to close the basilisk in the Chamber. But Riddle would just hiss the doors open again, and then Riddle would probably take solid form. And Ginny would die. And Voldemort would win.</p><p>Harry doesn’t want him to win.</p><p>The basilisk hisses loudly at one point, and Harry glances over his shoulder. The side of its head nearest him just has a pit instead of an eye. The stone snakes are writhing inside the pit, filling it. Harry smiles, triumphant, especially when the basilisk swings around wildly, still seeking him, and the stone snakes burst its other eye.</p><p>But Riddle is still shouting, still directing it, and Harry finds himself pinned against a wall. And the basilisk’s head driving down, shedding stone snakes all over the place.</p><p>One of the fangs pierces Harry’s arm and breaks off.</p><p>Harry reels backwards, his head falling against the wall. He feels the pain start to drive up his arm like another fang, and then stop. That’s weird, but he has no time to think about it. He’s panting, and he’s afire with hatred, and Riddle is <em>laughing </em>at him.</p><p>He looks down at his arm. There’s a dark line that’s curling and pooling on his arm. Harry blinks, not understanding. He would think it was his blood, but it appears to be<em> under </em>the surface of his arm, not on top.</p><p>“Why are you not dying?” Riddle asks abruptly, sharply. “With that much venom in your blood, you should be dying.”</p><p>Harry glances up. He wants to ask what makes Riddle thinks he’s not, but maybe Riddle can feel it when he’s draining the life from Ginny, or maybe he knows how long it takes basilisk bites to kill in general.</p><p>The black pool gathers under Harry’s skin. And then it lashes through him, <em>past </em>him in some way Harry can’t define, and up through his arm and to his shoulder and up to his face. Harry flinches as he feels it in his cheek, and then his forehead.</p><p>There’s a noise like a satisfied hiss, the Parseltongue word for <em>fed</em>, and a shriek, distant and dire and painful. And blood and venom both drip out of Harry’s forehead and onto his hands, but the venom doesn’t harm him.</p><p>He reaches up and realizes that both of them are coming from his scar.</p><p>“What—what—”</p><p>Harry turns back to Riddle. Riddle is staring from Harry to the diary he holds, and then at his scar, his eyes growing wider and wider.</p><p>“The basilisk’s venom prefers <em>delicate </em>prey…” he whispers.</p><p>“What are you on about, Riddle?” Harry’s not sure that he needs to know, though. It’s enough that he’s alive when he expected to die.</p><p>“You carried a Horcrux.” Riddle’s voice is soft, but he’s talking as if he’s inching out over a tightrope. “Behind your scar. There’s no other explanation for why the basilisk’s venom went after that instead of simply killing you.” He swallows. “I told you that I was part of a greater being.”</p><p>“Lord Voldemort, yes.” Harry can only stare at him. “How did <em>you </em>know I carried a Horcrux?”</p><p>“The minute you touched the diary.” Riddle turns and hisses at the basilisk, which is still making pained noises. It draws back and says nothing, although it keeps turning its blinded head in search of prey while its tongue makes darting motions. “I sensed it.”</p><p>There’s a moment of silence. Harry keeps still because he doesn’t otherwise know what to do, and he’s not sure that he understands. Riddle watches him obsessively, only now and then looking at the diary.</p><p>“So how did I get it?” Harry asks.</p><p>“It must have been the night you defeated the main soul that I used to be a part of,” Riddle answers instantly. “Little Ginny kept talking about that.” <em>Ginny.</em> Harry’s eyes go back to Ginny, and find that her lips are turning blue, but her chest is still rising and falling. “She didn’t know much, but what she did, she told me. If he went after you and used the Killing Curse when his soul was already unstable, then perhaps it could happen.”</p><p>“Professor Dumbledore said something about my mother’s love saving me,” Harry ventures. He doesn’t have much time, but he wants to know what Riddle is talking about. And he has an idea. He straightens and makes as if to wriggle the fang out of his arm.</p><p>Riddle snorts. “As though any true Slytherin’s Heir would think it was love. No, most likely a combination of powerful and Dark magic that he didn’t understand banished him. Or even the fact that you were a Parselmouth like him.” He leans forwards. “What I am saying, Harry, is why should we not be <em>allies</em>?”</p><p>“Um, because you were trying to kill me a minute ago?” Harry grasps the base of the fang and pulls it out of his arm.</p><p>Riddle only watches him do it. “But we are both parts of one greater being, shards of his soul. We are both Heirs of Slytherin in the true sense. And I know that you don’t care for little Ginny. She talked about it <em>all the time, </em>how you never even glanced her way when she sent that singing dwarf Valentine after you.”</p><p>Harry feels his face burn. It’s good, in a way, to have confirmation that it was Ginny, and that he doesn’t have some other deranged admirer lurking out there somewhere.</p><p>“We don’t have a use for love,” Riddle whispers. “But we have a use for companionship. Don’t we? We could be allies. We could prove our value to Lord Voldemort. And then he wouldn’t try to kill you anymore. He would never try to harm someone who carried such an intimate part of himself.”</p><p>Harry wrinkles his nose. That makes it sound like he’s had <em>sex </em>with Voldemort or something. “But he’s vengeful. He probably wouldn’t care and he would try to kill me anyway.”</p><p>“I promise that he would not. He would cherish you. He would value you.” Riddle’s voice is rapid and low. “I promise, Harry. Ginny told me things that made me think you haven’t had very much cherishing in your life. This would be a means of getting it.”</p><p>Harry looks at him. He’s holding the fang now, and Riddle hasn’t moved to take it from him, which means that Riddle can’t stop him. “But he’s the reason I never grew up with my parents. And I no longer carry a Horcrux. Do I?”</p><p>Riddle’s eyes widen in the second before Harry plunges the fang into the diary.</p><p>If the venom took care of one Horcrux, it ought to take care of another.</p><p>Riddle screams, and black liquid bursts from the book and covers Harry’s legs. It burns where it pours. Harry doesn’t move, though, just sits there and watches as Riddle reaches for him—</p><p>And tatters like a bad dream. A bad memory. He tries to hiss one last command to the basilisk, but the basilisk only continues turning its blind head back and forth, searching for prey, and doesn’t listen.</p><p>When Riddle is gone, Ginny looks better. Harry stands up and walks over to her. She’s breathing regularly now, and the blue tint to her lips is completely gone.</p><p>Harry drops the destroyed diary next to her, and stares down at the burns covering his legs, wondering what happens next and how they’re going to get out of the Chamber of Secrets when one of them is unconscious and the other’s injured.</p><p>A soft trill of song startles him, and Harry glances up and blinks at the fire that’s appeared in the air. He’s never seen it before, but he knows what it is, because the snakes have told him. Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix, who usually sits on a perch in the man’s office.</p><p>The basilisk lunges up, maddened, at the sound of the song. The stone snakes covering it patter to the floor, and Harry scoops them up as they hurtle over to him.</p><p>He watches a strange battle, then, with the phoenix dancing and dodging above the basilisk, and the basilisk trying as best as it can to kill the bird with its eyes and one fang missing. Harry asks the stone snakes in a low voice, “<em>Why is the basilisk trying so hard to kill the phoenix</em>?”</p><p>“<em>Phoenixes are creatures of true immortality and true beauty,</em>” one of the snakes says. “<em>Basilisks are only immortal if something doesn’t kill them, and they terrify all others and cannot breed naturally. They can never have another being tell them how beautiful they are. The phoenix has all the basilisk wishes to possess.”</em></p><p>Harry blinks, and watches as Fawkes dives like a falcon and finally achieves what he must have wanted to achieve all along, piercing one of the ruined eyes and driving his talons into the brain beyond. The basilisk sways for a long moment, probably too big to realize it’s dead all at once, and then slumps over to the floor of the Chamber.</p><p>Fawkes turns and streaks towards them. Harry braces himself, not sure if a phoenix will think he’s a good person or not, but Fawkes perches on his shoulder and begins to softly cry. Harry stares in disbelief as the tears roll down his beak and fall upon Harry himself. From there, they streak down in little waterfalls to touch his burned legs.</p><p>And where they touch, they heal.</p><p>Harry tries to remember if he’s heard anything about phoenix tears being a cure-all, and thinks he may have read it in one of his books. It’s not like he paid much attention at the time. Phoenix tears are rare and precious, and who would think that one would ever cry for <em>him</em>?</p><p>But it’s happening, and when it’s done, Harry feels so much better. He glances back and forth between Fawkes and Ginny. “Can you help her, too?” he asks.</p><p>He’s barely finished asking when Ginny’s eyes open, and she starts up and stares around the Chamber. “What happened—Tom?” Then her gaze falls on Harry, and she blushes.</p><p>Harry sighs, but he grasps Fawkes’s tail when the phoenix offers it. There’s little other option for getting out of here, probably.</p><p>*</p><p>There’s an…interesting…meeting with the Headmaster after the Chamber incident.</p><p>Headmaster Dumbledore twinkles madly away at him, and asks about the battle. Harry makes up stories about how he’s been concerned about Ginny for a while and used his Cloak to evade the basilisk—and that’s not even a lie, given all the different meanings “a while” and “evade” can have. That’s how he found out that she was in the Chamber.</p><p>And he puts the ruined diary, which he brought with them when Fawkes carried them out of the Chamber, on the desk in front of Dumbledore.</p><p>Dumbledore peers down at it, and the twinkle in his eyes fades away. He sighs. “You say that you managed to stab this with a basilisk fang that broke off in your arm?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And yet you survived with only a scar to show for it?” Dumbledore’s gaze moves to Harry and sweeps up and down him.</p><p>“Fawkes cried for me.” Harry smiles at the phoenix, who’s sitting on his perch and preening himself. “Thanks, Fawkes.”</p><p>It’s a lie that once again flies right under the Headmaster’s nose. Fawkes looks up, twitters briefly, and goes back to his preening.</p><p>“I see,” Dumbledore says, and pauses dramatically. Harry waits him out. Dumbledore finally gives in a minute or so later. “I think it is very interesting that you managed to descend into the Chamber and use the Cloak to slow the basilisk down. But I think that your Parseltongue ability may be gone now.”</p><p>“Oh, sir?” Harry knows it isn’t, since he spoke to the snakes in the Chamber after the destruction of the Horcrux in him. But he widens his eyes and waits.</p><p>“Yes. I have a pet theory that Tom Riddle—the mortal name of Lord Voldemort, of course—transferred some of his powers to you the night he attacked you. Such powers would include Parseltongue, which doesn’t have a history in the Potter family.”</p><p><em>Well, I have a pet theory that you’re full of shit. </em>Harry keeps that to himself, of course, along with his idea that Parseltongue doesn’t have a <em>public </em>history in the Potter family. Perhaps some of his ancestors weren’t fool enough to expose themselves.</p><p>“And it would explain why he deigned to talk to you instead of killing you right away.” Dumbledore nods thoughtfully. “Of course, in the future, if Voldemort learns of this, it might only make you more of a target for him. I would like to mentor you, Mr. Potter, and make sure that you have some training to prepare you for the future and Voldemort’s attempts on your life.”</p><p>“Of course, sir.” Harry smiles demurely. He would be a fool and more to turn that down. And he’ll still have the snakes to spy for him and see if Dumbledore tells anything to other people that’s the opposite of what he says to Harry. “Do you think I’m old enough now to know the truth of why Voldemort wanted to come after me?”</p><p>Dumbledore shakes his head a little. “I’m sorry, my dear boy. I do not want to burden you and make your childhood a misery.”</p><p>
  <em>What childhood did I have, stuffed in a cupboard under the stairs, made to do all my disgusting relatives’ chores—</em>
</p><p>Harry cuts the thought off, and nods. “Of course, sir. Thank you.”</p><p>*</p><p>Harry is studying furiously by himself in the library one day a few months into his third year when someone lets fall a stack of books next to him with an ominous thud.</p><p>Harry blinks and looks up. Parkinson is standing next to the table with her arms folded, her face full of judgment as usual.</p><p>“What do you want, Parkinson?” Harry sees no need to soften his words. Millicent is more of a friend to him than anyone else in Slytherin, and Malfoy and Nott aren’t as bad as they used to be, but he’s never associated with Parkinson.</p><p>“I know that you’re studying spells to get revenge on Sirius Black.”</p><p>Harry nods once. He <em>hates </em>Sirius Black. The man made his relatives keep him locked up in his room for almost every day this summer once a “well-meaning” official from the Ministry of Magic visited them and let them know that Black might be after Harry, specifically.</p><p>And Black should have been his godfather, should have been his parents’ friend, should have been one of those people Harry could actually trust to cherish and value him, like Tom Riddle said. Yes, Harry wants to curse him, wants to see him break like Tom Riddle broke in the moments before the destruction of the diary Horcrux.</p><p>That memory still makes Harry wake up smiling, sometimes.</p><p>“There isn’t much here.” Parkinson dismisses the whole of the Hogwarts library with a raking glance and a contemptuous sniff. “Not like my father’s library, which has all the books you could ever ask for.”</p><p>Holding Harry’s eye, she slides one of the books in the pile she dropped a little ways out from the others. Harry knows his mouth opens wide, and he can’t stop it from doing that. The book is one on torture curses that he’s been seeking for months, but there’s no shop in Diagon Alley that has it, the library at Hogwarts doesn’t have it (unless it’s in the Restricted Section), and Harry wasn’t able to get to Knockturn Alley this summer.</p><p>“What do you want in trade?” he asks quietly, leaning back to look at Parkinson.</p><p>“I don’t know if I believe that you’re the Heir of Slytherin, but you’re <em>something</em>,” Parkinson says. “I know that you don’t tell everything to Theodore and Draco, but probably not to your friends, either. And Millie thinks that she knows all your secrets, but I doubt it. One book, one secret.”</p><p>It’s a much more generous bargain than Harry knows he would get elsewhere. He looks from the book to Parkinson.</p><p>“And my assurance that you won’t spread those secrets around?” he asks.</p><p>Parkinson laughs. “What, you think I’m like Lockhart?” Lockhart, after trying vainly to claim that he defeated the basilisk, gave up and left last year with a vague threat to “spill other people’s secrets” that Harry doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need to understand it, as long as the buffoon is gone. “No. I don’t want other people to know the secrets I know. It diminishes their value.”</p><p>“I still want you to make the oath.”</p><p>Parkinson shrugs. “Fine. But it has to not cost me anything but pain if it’s broken. Not my magic.”</p><p>Harry is satisfied with that, and they make the oath, and Parkinson hands him the book. Harry’s fingers tremble as he touches it, although he tries to look as calm as he can.</p><p>“The secret,” Parkinson says, leaning forwards.</p><p>“You know that announcement Dumbledore made at the Leaving Feast last term?” Harry asks.</p><p>Parkinson nods. “About how you defeated the basilisk and lost your Parseltongue?”</p><p>“<em>It’s not true.</em>”</p><p>Parkinson’s face is so delighted that Harry doesn’t see any reason to spoil the delight by telling her that Ron and Hermione already know about the Parseltongue thing.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry drags himself slowly upright, and spits blood. Then he checks with his tongue. The teeth he thought were loose are still in his mouth, and that’s a good thing.</p><p>What is <em>not </em>a good thing is how stupid he feels.</p><p>Harry leans back against the wall in one of the corridors on the third floor, and reflects.</p><p>*</p><p>He was supposed to meet Ron and Hermione in the library. When they didn’t show up, he wasn’t overly concerned; sometimes they can’t meet him because of their differing schedules, or because older Gryffindors are harassing them about spending so much time with a “snake.” He got involved in writing his Charms essay.</p><p>“Potter! Potter!”</p><p>Harry glances up and blinks. He recognizes the girl standing in front of him, but he’s never spoken to her before.</p><p>“Spinnet?” he asks, after a moment of struggling to remember. She’s a Chaser on the Gryffindor team, that’s right.</p><p>Spinnet nods urgently. “You need to hurry up and come with me! Ron’s in the hospital wing!” She lowers her voice a little, as if that will make what she has to say less concerning. “They think it was Slytherins who did it.”</p><p>Harry scrapes his essays and books into his bag. He’s learned the hard way never to leave anything that belongs to him in the open, even though Crabbe and Goyle haven’t tried to destroy anything of his in years. Someone will do it for spite, for fun. Maybe Sirius Black would do it. He tried to break into Gryffindor Tower on Halloween and almost destroyed their guardian portrait, just for insanity, maybe.</p><p>Harry shoulders his satchel and follows Spinnet as she runs towards the hospital wing. They get to the third floor, and Spinnet glances around. Then she nods. “This ought to be far enough,” she says.</p><p>Harry falls back as he realizes that other people are waiting for him. Tall people. Older Gryffindors.</p><p>It’s more than half the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Not the twins, but Oliver Wood, and the three Chasers, and a fellow called McLaggen who’s their Seeker.</p><p>Harry swallows. McLaggen is only a year above him, but he <em>looks </em>so much bigger.</p><p>“Like we discussed,” Wood says, nodding to Spinnet and the rest. “Not that hard. Just enough to make sure that he can’t play that game against Hufflepuff.”</p><p>“What is going on?” Harry says.</p><p>He whispers it, but Wood still hears him and glances at him, sighing. “It’s not personal, Potter,” he says. “But this is my last year at the school, and we <em>are </em>going to win the Quidditch Cup. I’m sick of losing to Slytherin every year, especially when you lot cheat all the time.” He slaps his left fist into his right palm. “So this was McLaggen’s idea. We’ll do this as quick as we can. Don’t fight back. It’ll make it less painful for you.”</p><p>Up until the moment they begin hitting him, Harry thinks they won’t actually do it. They play with the twins. The twins <em>like </em>him. And they’re Gryffindors. House of honor and chivalry and all that. Harry knows Ron and Hermione are pretty typical Gryffindors, and they’re <em>good </em>people.</p><p>Knowing that doesn’t make the punches that hammer home on him, mostly given by McLaggen, hurt any less.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry spits more blood out and gets up to walk to the hospital wing. The Gryffindors seemed to assume he wouldn’t tell anybody, or go seek medical attention. In fact, Harry intends to, although he won’t spread around how he was so stupid and weak as to fall for Spinnet’s nonsense and run after her alone. Telling people it was an ambush will work well enough.</p><p>Why <em>did </em>he run after her alone?</p><p>It hurts him more than the wounds to admit it, but by the time he gets to Madam Pomfrey and drives her into a fussy passion about his bruises, Harry knows the right answer.</p><p>He had a romanticized view of the Gryffindors. He still yearned for that House as the one he <em>should </em>have been Sorted into. He thinks of Slytherin as the Death Eater House, the one he was put in against his will. Yes, he believed in a hot second that Slytherins would have bullied Ron badly enough to put him in the hospital wing, because he’s been on the receiving end of that bullying. He never believed that Gryffindors would do the same thing.</p><p>By the time Madam Pomfrey has finished casting charms to heal his teeth and spreading the Bruise Balm over his shoulders and stomach and legs and arms and hips, Harry feels the familiar cold rage spreading through him.</p><p>Well, no more. From now on, he’ll judge people purely as individuals. Purely on whether they’re friendly to him or not. Or useful to him or not.</p><p>*</p><p>Two days later, Harry catches the Snitch and ensures that Slytherin wins the Hufflepuff game 410-80.</p><p>As he wheels in a circle, fist with the imprisoned Snitch held high, and the Slytherin section of the stands cheers themselves hoarse, Harry looks towards the Gryffindor section, and smiles.</p><p>Conspicuously, two of them are missing. Oliver Wood and Cormac McLaggen are in the hospital wing with cases of mysterious, lingering snakebite.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I wanted to speak to you about something, Harry, my boy.”</p><p>“Yes, Headmaster?” Harry always acts respectful when he’s in Dumbledore’s office, and frequently surprised. He doesn’t want to give Dumbledore any reason to suspect that he knows most of the conversations Dumbledore has with Snape and other people up here. And he does relish the obscure knowledge and spells that Dumbledore teaches him, even if most of those spells are prank jinxes and the like.</p><p>Harry isn’t going to disdain any magic that might be useful. Maybe someday, a spell that rubs soap in his enemy’s eyes will make the difference between life and death.</p><p>Dumbledore smiles at him over the cup of tea he holds. Harry always accepts tea, but only to warm his hands. He isn’t drinking it when he has no way to be sure that it’s safe. “I notice that you’ve been spending more time with Miss Parkinson lately.”</p><p>Harry nods. “Yes, sir.” It’s surprisingly easy to relate to Pansy. She’s not as smart as Hermione or as open-hearted as Ron, but she has a cutting suspicion of other people that Harry finds likeable. And she’s been content with giving him such <em>interesting </em>books for relatively simple secrets.</p><p>“Do you think that wise, Harry?”</p><p>Harry ignores the use of his first name. It’s sort of useful, a gauge on how silly and child-like Dumbledore thinks he is. “Why wouldn’t it be, sir?”</p><p>“I simply wonder if the friendship of young Slytherins is something you should seek out. Some of them are fine, I’m certain.” Dumbledore raises his hand as if to forestall a protest that Harry hasn’t opened his mouth to make. “But others are…well, children of Death Eaters.”</p><p>As it happens, Pansy’s father isn’t a Death Eater, simply intensely practical. But Harry knows exactly what Dumbledore is trying to nudge him towards. The snakes have reported on the Headmaster’s investigations of the diary and his murmurings to himself.</p><p>Several of them had the word “Horcrux” in them. Dumbledore probably suspects what Harry used to be and thinks he’ll have to keep him under his thumb.</p><p>“I don’t think Pansy’s father is a Death Eater, sir,” Harry says, doing his best to radiate naïve and charming confusion.</p><p>Dumbledore’s smile turns condescending. “But even so, he could have influenced her undesirably, and she might influence you.”</p><p>“To do what, sir?”</p><p>“To take actions that might set you on a Dark path.”</p><p>That might be Dumbledore’s most exasperating habit, this pseudo-cryptic wisdom that means Harry can’t respond as openly as he likes. He doesn’t want to sound too smart or too independent.</p><p>But he can play dumb.</p><p>“Oh, <em>no</em>, sir,” Harry says, his eyes wide. “Pansy and I talk a lot about homework together. Is the homework Dark?” He makes sure to sit up and stare at Dumbledore with his eyes wide and his body thrumming as if with nervous tension.</p><p>Dumbledore sighs and backs down. “Of course not, Harry. Forgive an old man’s worry.”</p><p>
  <em>You probably think I’m like Tom Riddle, don’t you? Speaker to snakes—or you think I’ve given that up now—and Sorted into Slytherin and an orphan and someone you don’t understand.</em>
</p><p>Harry just smiles at him, and takes a fake sip of his tea.</p><p>*</p><p>“Could you stay after class, please, Mr. Potter?”</p><p>Harry turns around his with his polite blank face, the one he wears around most professors other than Snape and Dumbledore. With Dumbledore, Harry has to feign real enthusiasm, and with Snape, he lets his hatred out because they both know there’s no point in pretending.</p><p>But Professor Remus Lupin is an odd sort. He talks to Harry as if they were old friends and has offered him extra tutoring, which Harry’s refused because he’s already getting that from Dumbledore and Lupin hasn’t offered it to anyone else. That makes Harry worry that this is yet another Voldemort-possessed imposter.</p><p>Now, though, Lupin stands in front of the door as though he thinks Harry would hesitate to blast past him to get out. It’s true that Harry would prefer to save the blasting for Snape, Voldemort, and certain bullies, though. He looks at Lupin and asks, “Yes, sir?”</p><p>“I hoped that you would come and speak to me before this if you needed extra help.” Lupin’s voice is soft and chiding.</p><p>“Was there something wrong with my last essay, sir?”</p><p>“One of your classmates reported your reaction to Dementors on the train earlier this year.” Harry just feels glad that it happened in front of a compartment of younger Slytherins he’s already impressed and essentially forced into keeping quiet, or it could have spread a lot further. “I wanted to let you know that you can depend on me to help you, protect you. But you haven’t, even though there are Dementors stationed all around the school.”</p><p>Harry raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t come into close enough contact with Dementors again to need help, sir. But thank you for thinking of me.”</p><p>It wasn’t pleasant to relive the moment when the basilisk came out of Slytherin’s statue, but that doesn’t matter. There are other, more important things to think about.</p><p>Lupin’s gaze turns pleading. “You’re sure you don’t need extra help? Even with—Sirius Black after you?”</p><p>“I’ve been studying hard, sir.” And since Lupin undoubtedly wouldn’t approve of the Dark Arts books that Pansy is lending him, Harry is going to keep it at that.</p><p>Lupin stares at him. Harry stares back. Lupin finally utters a long, soft sigh, and moves aside while unlocking the door.</p><p>Harry’s skin crawls. He didn’t realize the door was <em>locked </em>like that. He nods to Lupin again and moves past him with long strides.</p><p>Now to find the person who told Lupin about his reaction to Dementors, and <em>persuade </em>them to keep their mouth shut.</p><p>*</p><p>“I’m not letting you go anywhere alone with Gryffindors, Potter. You know what happened the last time.”</p><p>Pansy says that, and follows him and Ron and Hermione out onto the grounds as they hide and listen to the debate over Buckbeak’s future. And that begins one of the longest and strangest evenings of Harry’s life.</p><p>A black dog comes out of nowhere and lunges for Ron’s rat, who he’s been carrying around for days now as if he thinks that that rat is what Black wanted to take when he tried to break into Gryffindor Tower. Ron shouts and shoves at the dog, which only presses him flat and growls in his face.</p><p>Harry is drawing his wand when Scabbers leaps out of Ron’s pocket and runs for it. The black dog lunges after him and grabs the rat’s tail in his teeth. He then whirls around as if he means to run.</p><p>But Ron grabs him, and actually tries to wrestle Scabbers out of his teeth. Harry isn’t sure if it’s Ron who won’t let go of the dog or the dog who decides that he might as well take both an annoying kid and an annoying rat, but Ron gets dragged along. Harry and Pansy and Hermione run after them, trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to alert the Minister and executioner and Malfoy’s father in Hagrid’s hut.</p><p>By the time they get through the extremely strange tunnel under the Whomping Willow, and realize they’re in the Shrieking Shack, Ron’s leg is broken and the dog has transformed into a man.</p><p>Hermione is panting hard at Harry’s side. Pansy is silent, her eyes darting about as if trying to understand how they came to be in this situation. Ron has fainted from the pain.</p><p>Harry only feels a hard, fatal joy.</p><p>“You’re Sirius Black,” he says to the man standing in front of him, whose wild, shaggy-haired face Harry has seen peering from posters and papers for months now.</p><p>“Yes,” the man says hoarsely. “Your godfather.” Harry starts to speak, but Black turns and gives the rat a sharp shake. “And <em>this </em>is Peter Pettigrew.”</p><p>It’s such a bizarre story that Harry gives him a chance to speak. And then more footsteps pound up the tunnel, and Lupin arrives, out of breath.</p><p>Lupin and Black exchange a few hard, terse words that make Harry realize Lupin was a friend of his parents, too. Was that the reason he was disappointed that Harry didn’t request extra tutoring? Well, Harry will probably never know, since Lupin never actually spat the words out.</p><p>Lupin seems to think Black is trustworthy. He gives him his wand, which makes Pansy shuffle backwards and Hermione let out a squeak of alarm. Harry just keeps watching. He’s confident that if Black tries to curse him, he can defend himself.</p><p>Instead, Black aims the wand at the rat and mutters something. And the rat turns into a pallid, sniveling man, trying to hide behind brown hair that’s nearly as shaggy as Black’s own.</p><p>Harry blinks. Then he blinks again. Part of him doesn’t want to give up his hatred against Black, someone who’s within his reach in the way that Voldemort isn’t.</p><p>But on the other hand, he still has a real traitor he can curse and hate. And Pettigrew doesn’t even have an excuse.</p><p>“Yes, I betrayed James and Lily,” the man squeaks, his hands pedaling in the air like paws. “I <em>had </em>to! You don’t know what the Dark Lord is like! There’s no way that anyone can stand up to him, his power is—”</p><p>“<em>I </em>stood up to him,” Harry interrupts. “My first year, when he possessed our Defense professor and tried to steal the Philosopher’s Stone. I was <em>eleven.</em> You’re a bloody adult, Pettigrew.”</p><p>The former rat stares at him with wide eyes, and then manages a smile. “Little Harry. You were always so cute when you were younger—”</p><p>“Before you betrayed my parents and condemned me to a living hell with Muggles, you mean?” Harry demands.</p><p>“What do the Muggles do to you?” Black asks in a low voice.</p><p>Harry glances at him and decides that the people here are unlikely to betray him. Or, if they do, he’ll know the source of the leak. “They stick me in a cupboard under the stairs. It was my bedroom until I came to Hogwarts, and since then, they mainly use it as a punishment. And they make me do chores, swing frying pans at me, let my cousin beat me up—”</p><p>Black growls like the dog Animagus he apparently is. “I’ll kill them.”</p><p>For a moment, Harry’s world seems to stop. It’s the first time that an adult has ever sounded as if they really would fight for him, instead of looking the other way or hating him for no reason or dispensing cryptic advice.</p><p>Black cares so much about Harry that he wants to murder people he’s never met, instead of just the man who betrayed Harry’s parents.</p><p>Harry is intensely flattered.</p><p>Then, of course, Hermione and Lupin jump in, both scolding Black and saying he can’t do that. Harry just watches him. Black catches his eye and winks at him, a little gleam of madness in his face that Harry understands and appreciates.</p><p>Black might say all the right things in the moment to placate Hermione and Lupin, but he’ll do what he promised sooner or later.</p><p>Pansy does say, when Black starts to aim his borrowed wand at Pettigrew, “Don’t you need him to prove your innocence? I know he’s the reason you spent twelve years in prison, but they’ll just send you back there for his murder if he’s not alive.”</p><p>“Yes,” Harry says quietly. “She’s right, Sirius. I want you free so I can live with you. I want to know you as my godfather the way I always should have.”</p><p>Sirius smiles at him. Then he gives Pansy a dubious glance. “I suppose. But how am I supposed to trust the Ministry that imprisoned me without a trial?”</p><p>“Take him back to the castle,” Pansy suggests. “You can trust Professor Dumbledore to try and see justice done, can’t you?”</p><p>Harry stares at her. Pansy raises her eyebrows at him, and mouths, <em>Gryffindor.</em></p><p>Yes, well, Gryffindors <em>would </em>have more of a reason to trust Dumbledore. Harry and Pansy exchange what could possibly be called a Slytherin glance, and go to work to persuade Sirius to imprison Pettigrew and take him back to Dumbledore.</p><p>They manage to arrange themselves at last, with Pettigrew bound and walking between Black and Lupin, Ron floating on a stretcher with his broken leg placed gently in restraints, and Pansy and Hermione taking the rearguard. Harry finds himself walking beside Black—or Sirius, as he prefers to be called. And Harry will use that name if he wants.</p><p>He’ll do just about anything for Sirius, the first adult he can remember giving a damn about him since his parents died.</p><p>They come out from under the tree, and the full moon shines above them. And Lupin tilts his head back and growls, and Harry stares at him, wondering if Lupin is a dog Animagus, too, and why he would choose this time of all times to transform.</p><p>Then he sees the light of the full moon striking Lupin, and remembers the days earlier in the year when Lupin would seem to get randomly sick and be out of class, and the essay that Snape assigned them on werewolves.</p><p>“Harry!” Sirius shouts.</p><p>Hermione shouts, too, and runs forwards, trying to get between him and Lupin. Pettigrew twists at the same moment, transforming into a rat. Sirius lunges for him, shouting in fury, and grabs Hermione out of the way and throws her aside. Harry hears her scream as she lands, and sees her arm hanging limply.</p><p>He and Pansy draw their wands in an instant, and get between Hermione and Ron and the werewolf. Pettigrew scrambles, in rat form, into the trees. Harry watches him go with an intense frustration, but surviving a werewolf has to be the priority right now.</p><p>Sirius has turned into dog form, and stands between Harry and the twisted creature that Lupin has become. Lupin lunges forwards with a snarl, and Sirius leaps and tumbles and gets out of the way, then snaps at Lupin’s tail and runs into the Forbidden Forest. Lupin follows him with a loud growl.</p><p>Harry clenches his wand, but Hermione is starting to cry with pain, and the stretcher has collapsed to the ground without Sirius and Lupin’s magic to lift it. Pansy is also trembling. Harry knows she would try to be strong if he needed her to be, but he has a responsibility to his friends.</p><p>With a heavy heart, Harry sets the stretcher floating again and casts a spell to immobilize Hermione’s broken arm.</p><p>*</p><p>“I am afraid that the Aurors who came with the Minister to witness Buckbeak’s execution found both Professor Lupin and Mr. Black, and have confined Mr. Black to a room on the third floor. They intend to bring a Dementor to Kiss him.”</p><p>Dumbledore waltzes into the hospital wing with those words. Harry looks up from the stool he’s sitting on between Ron and Hermione’s beds, and then starts to his feet as the import of the words hits him.</p><p>“But they can’t! He’s innocent! We told you!”</p><p>Dumbledore sighs. “I did try to tell Cornelius that, Harry, but I’m afraid he’s not listening. He seems too intently focused on carrying out the sentence on Mr. Black for the accolades it will bring him.”</p><p>Harry turns, ready to leave the hospital wing and go curse the Minister himself. He’s not going to let Sirius be taken from him, especially so soon after finding him.</p><p>Pansy, who’s been lingering quietly in the corner of the hospital wing behind Hermione’s bed, lays a hand on his arm. Harry glances up and sees Dumbledore holding out something small and shining golden.</p><p>“Perhaps Miss Granger’s Time-Turner will help?” Dumbledore asks softly.</p><p>“Granger’s <em>what</em>?” Pansy is the one who asks, but Harry glances back at Hermione and remembers how tired she seemed and how many times she seemed to be in a place that she couldn’t possibly been, and shakes his head a little. He wishes she’d told him, but considering the amount of secrets he’s kept from her, he can’t really blame her.</p><p>“Professor McGonagall allowed Miss Granger to have it to take the greatest number of classes possible,” Dumbledore is explaining in a mild voice, as if the Minister for Magic isn’t on his way to Sirius’s cell with a Dementor <em>right now. </em>“It only goes back an hour, and you will have to be very careful not to change anything you know to be true, and to stay out of sight of your past selves. But I am certain that you will manage to save <em>the deserving.</em>”</p><p>The way he stresses those words, staring into Harry’s eyes, tells Harry that he already has a plan. And when Harry thinks about it, he can only see one thing that would work.</p><p>He’s happy to let Dumbledore claim the credit for that plan if he wants. Harry hardly cares about credit at the moment. He reaches out and snatches the Time-Turner from Dumbledore’s hand. The man’s lips twitch a little, but he doesn’t say anything.</p><p>“Come on, Pansy,” Harry says.</p><p>Dumbledore catches his breath. “Are you sure, Mr. Potter? I thought you would take Mr. Weasley or Miss Granger with you. Miss Granger would be the better choice, since she knows how to work the Time-Turner.”</p><p>Harry rakes him with a glance that seems to surprise Dumbledore. Harry suspects his true nature is bubbling too close to the surface of his soul right now. But if he can save Sirius, the one adult who promised to try and take care of him, Harry doesn’t give a shit.</p><p>“Hermione has a broken arm, and Ron has a broken leg,” Harry says, his voice clipped. “Pansy can help me best.”</p><p>Pansy seems to stand taller and suck in a deep breath. She can do that if she wants. Harry has little concept of what’s going through her head right now, except that she’s probably proud to be trusted.</p><p>“Turn it <em>this </em>way to go back an hour,” Dumbledore says, and smiles at him. “Do allow me to get outside the hospital wing first, as I should not see you disappear.”</p><p>Harry nods shortly, straining his ears for the sound of Dementors. He can’t hear them, and he’s not even sure they make a noise as they glide along, but he’s had enough of delaying. He barely waits for the door to fall shut behind Dumbledore before he turns to Pansy and holds the chain out. They should probably both put their heads through it so they don’t get lost.</p><p>Pansy steps forwards, her eyes shining, and accepts the chain. Harry wishes that he had the Invisibility Cloak with him, so they could go disguised, but that would prompt questions from Pansy that he doesn’t really want to answer.</p><p>He twists the Time-Turner the way Dumbledore showed him.</p><p>*</p><p>And from there, it’s simple enough. They duck out of the hospital wing when Madam Pomfrey goes into her office and run from tree to tree on their way to the place behind Hagrid’s house where the hippogriff, Buckbeak, is tethered. Harry remembers both Hagrid’s lesson from earlier in the year and how Malfoy got injured by this very hippogriff when he insulted him, and he approaches with a low bow.</p><p>(Personally, Malfoy getting injured is one of the most hilarious things that Harry’s ever seen at Hogwarts, but it’s for the best that it serves as a lesson for him now).</p><p>“Wait, you’re going to <em>take the hippogriff</em>?” Pansy’s voice is a little high. “But we know he was executed!”</p><p>“We don’t know that at all,” Harry says in a soft voice, his eyes locked on Buckbeak’s as he bows. “We didn’t see it happen.”</p><p>“We heard the axe—”</p><p>“We heard it fall, and hit something. We don’t know what. And Macnair was swearing after that, remember? Not laughing the way he probably would have after a successful execution.” Harry bows deeper as Buckbeak just stares at him, wings moving softly back and forth. “Beautiful one. May we ride you to freedom? We want to rescue you, and a man who hasn’t done anything wrong.”</p><p>He can practically feel Pansy choking back a protest, but he ignores her. After witnessing Malfoy’s “accident,” Pansy knows very well that hippogriffs can understand English.</p><p>Buckbeak waits another nerve-wracking moment, then bows back to them. Harry sighs and walks forwards, untethering Buckbeak as quietly as he can. He knows that he should be out of sight to his past self, but he’s not sure about the windows of Hagrid’s hut, and he’s glad when he finally swings up on Buckbeak’s back.</p><p>“Come on, Pansy.” He holds out his hand.</p><p>“He won’t hurt me?”</p><p>Pansy’s voice is tiny, but she comes forwards without waiting for reassurance, and Harry feels a glow of satisfaction. She trusts him enough to risk getting scratched the way Malfoy was. Yes, he thinks he can trust her.</p><p>“No, because I approached him right.” Harry strokes Buckbeak’s neck. “Besides, I know that he doesn’t want to die.”</p><p>Buckbeak gives a shiver of his wings, but doesn’t object. Harry pulls Pansy up behind him, and makes sure that she’s holding onto his waist. Then he whispers to Buckbeak, “Move a little further away, and then take flight. They might see the movement from inside the hut otherwise.”</p><p>Buckbeak bobs his head in what’s at least a good imitation of a nod if not a genuine one, and moves forwards at a jolting trot, his hind hooves working oddly with his taloned forefeet. Then he jumps into the air, and they’re rising with some of the same lightness and rightness that Harry feels on a broom.</p><p>They land under a tree and hide in the Forbidden Forest for a while, until, by Pansy’s careful <em>Tempus </em>Charm, the Minister will be heading to the castle with the Dementors. Then Buckbeak rises again at another direction from Harry and flies towards the castle.</p><p>Dumbledore neglected to tell them <em>which </em>room on the third floor Sirius is being held in, but it turns out to be obvious, given the thick shutters that are barred across the window and the glowing warding spells on it. Harry draws his wand. Behind him, Pansy whispers, “I don’t think I know how to handle those spells.”</p><p>“Don’t worry, I do,” Harry says, and he touches his wand to the first warding spells. They buzz warningly at him, but Harry doesn’t care. He knows what to do because of the books from Pansy’s father’s library. “<em>Frangere</em>!”</p><p>The General Breaking Hex hammers into the wards on the shutters, and two of them snap with a cascade of sparks. Another one resists, but Harry repeats the spell, and it parts like a rope strained with too much weight. Harry reaches out and unhooks the latch on the shutters, ignoring Pansy’s intake of breath as Harry balances himself on the edge of Buckbeak’s back. Then again, compared to a Quidditch broom, this is nothing.</p><p>The shutters open easily, and Sirius’s haggard face appears. Harry is a little amazed to see that they’ve left him unbound, but of course, they took any wand he had away before they put him in here. They probably thought there was no reason to restrain him with more than the shutters and Locking Charms on the door.</p><p>“Harry?” Sirius breathes, sounding dazed. “What did you—how did you—”</p><p>Harry smiles at him. “This hippogriff was going to be executed for attacking a student whose father is on the Board of Governors. Thought we could liberate him and you at the same time.”</p><p>Sirius nods, still staring at him. “You—Remus didn’t come back and harm any of you, did he? They didn’t tell me.”</p><p>“He didn’t,” Pansy says flatly. “No thanks to him being a werewolf.”</p><p>Sirius ignores her, staying focused absolutely on Harry. Harry drinks that in. Someone who puts him first is—really nice.</p><p>“No, he didn’t,” Harry says. “But they’re going to bring Dementors to Kiss you, so you’ve got to get out of here.” He starts to swing off Buckbeak’s back.</p><p>“Wait,” Pansy says suddenly. “They can’t come in the door and find us here, Harry. We’ll have to all three fly back to the infirmary window, and then Black can take Buckbeak on from there.”</p><p>Harry feels his face burn at not realizing something so simple, and he nods at Pansy. He does touch Buckbeak on the neck, though, and ask, “Do you think you can handle three passengers, boy?”</p><p>Buckbeak gives a contemptuous flutter of his wings. Sirius laughs, sounding relieved. “Always good to ask, but most hippogriffs are pretty strong. This looks like one.”</p><p>Buckbeak turns his head to brush Sirius with a slight, approving glance.</p><p>Sirius sits in between Harry and Pansy for the short flight back to the hospital wing window, and Harry soaks in as much as he can of the warmth of his godfather’s arms and tight hug, the first time he can remember an adult giving him one. When Sirius tells him that he wishes they could live together, it’s only icing on the cake.</p><p>And then they’re climbing in the infirmary window, and Sirius and Buckbeak are soaring away. Harry watches him go, and knows that he looks vulnerable in that moment, with tears in the corners of his eyes. Pansy mercifully stands silent and says nothing.</p><p>Finally, Harry turns to her and breathes, “You can’t tell <em>anyone </em>about this, Pansy.”</p><p>“You think they’d believe me?” Pansy’s eyes are very wide.</p><p>“You still can’t.”</p><p>And Pansy nods. Her eyes still have some of the same shine that they did earlier. Maybe she’s imagining the power she can have over other Slytherins by dropping hints about the whole thing, by implying that she and Harry share secrets they can’t share.</p><p>Harry can’t be bothered by that right now. He looks back at the dot in the sky that’s the one adult who cares about him. The one who couldn’t stay, but who <em>exists. </em></p><p>And he smiles.</p><p>*</p><p>As it turns out, a murderous godfather makes a <em>great </em>tool to terrorize the Dursleys into leaving him alone with.</p><p>And when a not-at-all-mysterious broom-shaped package arrives for his birthday, carried by tropical parrots, that turns out to be the brand-new Firebolt broom, that’s pretty great, too.</p><p>*</p><p>“Harry Potter.”</p><p>Dumbledore makes that announcement, and Harry feels his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach.</p><p>So far, fourth year has actually been <em>nice</em>, minus the lack of Quidditch. Lupin got sacked for being a werewolf, and the new Defense professor, Moody, is teaching them interesting things, like the Unforgivable Curses. No one has tried to threaten Harry’s life in the corridors, and the snakes bring him news, so that he’s been able to evade several ambushes by Gryffindors, including one where he led them right into the rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team. Sirius writes regularly.</p><p>But of course it couldn’t last. Of course his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire.</p><p>Harry gets up and walks into the little room off the Great Hall that the rest of the “Champions” have gone into.</p><p>It rapidly becomes clear that no one is going to believe him. Harry watches the adults in silence, and burns with frozen fury. None of the other Champions are happy, either, although Cedric Diggory looks a little sorry for him.</p><p>No choice. He has to compete. The Goblet has gone out, and it won’t light again until the beginning of the next Tournament. Or whenever they decide to use it to trap someone else helpless and unwilling into this kind of shit, Harry reckons.</p><p>Harry steps out of the little room committed to survival, and also to warding his bedroom more deeply. He’s sure that Slytherin won’t like it that he supposedly put his name in the Goblet and got <em>caught </em>as a “cheater.” Snape is already glaring at him.</p><p>*</p><p>He steps into the common room, and straight into the middle of a party.</p><p>“Welcome, fellow serpents, the hero of the hour!” Malfoy crows, standing up in the middle of a circle of chairs, his eyes bright and gleeful.</p><p>There’s a loud cheer, and then several seventh-years start the letters on the banners strung on the wall moving, and one of the sixth-years begins distributing Firewhisky. Harry stares around with dazed eyes. The banners say, HARRY POTTER, SLYTHERIN CHAMPION.</p><p>He’s not stupid enough to think this is anything other than self-serving, but it’s still a very different reaction than he thought he’d get. Harry frowns, shakes his head, and drags Malfoy over to a corner as soon as he can for a private chat. (It comes after a lot of handshakes and winks and fairly serious mentions of the Galleons they’ve bet on Harry).</p><p>“What the hell, Malfoy?” Harry whispers, after lifting a privacy charm. That’s just second nature for any conversation he has in the Slytherin common room now. “Why isn’t everyone upset that I got caught?”</p><p>“They didn’t catch you when it was <em>important</em>, did they?” Malfoy winks at him the way some of the others have, but he sighs and lets the smile fade when Harry just stares at him. “It’s bloody impressive that you got past that Age Line, and in a way that meant they couldn’t disqualify you. I suppose you don’t want to tell me how you did it?”</p><p>Harry is a lot of things, but not stupid enough to protest his innocence. Not right now. He raises his eyebrows. “Why would I do that when we aren’t even on a first-name basis, Malfoy?”</p><p>“We need to remedy that.” Malfoy sighs again. “Call me Draco, please. I know I’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but I hope to make up for it. I don’t want to be on the bad side of the most powerful wizard in our year.”</p><p>And he holds out his hand like he did on the train, a lifetime ago.</p><p>Harry swallows, and reaches out to shake it. He knows that he’s making another commitment, one that will be harder to change or take back, but Malfoy—Draco—<em>can </em>be a powerful ally when he wants to, and hopefully he’ll make fewer stupid moves like antagonizing a hippogriff when he has Harry around to monitor him.</p><p>“It’s Harry, then.”</p><p>Draco’s smile breaks across his face like a wave. “And am I still the wrong sort?”</p><p>Harry gives him a critical stare. “I’m thinking about that.”</p><p>Draco’s smile is brilliant as he cants his head to the side. “Fair enough.”</p><p>And Draco just looks so <em>thrilled </em>to finally be accepted into the inner circle or whatever-the-hell-it-is that Slytherins call it among themselves that Harry smiles back.</p><p>*</p><p>The Tasks are hard, but they’re a lot easier than they would have been otherwise, because of Sirius.</p><p>Sirius owls him a communication mirror, and they start speaking through that just about every evening, with Harry’s curtains drawn around the bed and the strongest warding spells he knows layered on top of that. Seeing Sirius’s face relaxes Harry, and he learns a lot more about the man who would have been his second father in another world.</p><p>Sirius is the one who tells Harry, when he complains about Ron thinking he cheated to get his name in the Goblet, to leave it alone, and predicts that Ron will come back sooner or later. When Harry tells Sirius that Ron feels overshadowed by his older brothers, Sirius snorts and nods.</p><p>“I was like that, but with me it was my younger brother,” Sirius says, shaking his head. “Reggie. Regulus, that is. He was everything my parents wanted, calm and obedient and a believer in pureblood politics, and a Slytherin. They always lamented to me that he should have been born first.” Sirius sighs. “He became a Death Eater and died young, poor bastard. I wished afterwards that I would have talked to him, and made him realize it was our <em>parents </em>who were the unreasonable ones. Ron will come around, Harry. Leave him alone for now, and let him.”</p><p>Sneaking around under his Invisibility Cloak, Harry learns the First Task is bloody dragons, and hatches the plan to Summon his Firebolt with Sirius. Hermione helps him practice Summoning Charms until Harry’s dreams echo with <em>Accio</em>, and it works. It’s still dangerous, of course, but Harry gets the golden egg away, and evades the dragon, and there’s another back-pounding celebration in the Slytherin common room that night.</p><p>Ron does come back and apologize, shame-faced. Harry punches him lightly in the arm, and forgives him. It’s easier than he expected. He took Sirius’s advice and ignored Ron’s sulking. Putting Ron out of his mind means that the betrayal never had the chance to fully hurt him.</p><p>It’s a plan Harry thinks he can keep to for future betrayals.</p><p>*</p><p>The minute Harry holds the golden egg up to the mirror—behind Silencing Charms—and plays it for Sirius, his godfather is shuddering in recognition.</p><p>“Mermish,” Sirius mutters. “You need to get to a place where you can play it underwater, see what it says. And get ready for a swim in the lake.”</p><p>Harry dedicates one whole week to the Water Bubble Charm, which conjures a bubble of water floating along in mid-air, about twice his size. Deciphering the riddle is pretty easy. The merfolk are going to take something he holds dear and put it under the water, and he’ll have an hour to get it back.</p><p>When Harry explains the riddle to Sirius, Sirius looks at him in silence for a long time, and then says, “You’re more afraid of this then I thought you’d be. Why?”</p><p>“I can’t swim,” Harry says.</p><p>“You and I both know there are magical ways around that.” Sirius is gentle. “Please don’t lie to me, Harry.”</p><p>Harry swallows back the pounding pulse of fear in his throat, and whispers, “What if they find some way to take <em>you</em>? And then arrest you when I bring you out of the lake? Or just have you Kissed right on the spot?” He wakes up from nightmares about Dementors now, but not for the reasons that Lupin probably thought.</p><p>“Harry. Harry, listen to me.”</p><p>Sirius’s voice is kind and low, all the things that Harry once wanted an adult’s voice to be, and he looks reluctantly back at the mirror. Sirius is leaning so close to the glass on his side that almost the only thing Harry can see is his eyes.</p><p>“They can’t reach me,” Sirius promises. “They can’t take me. And if they tried, we would <em>fight </em>our way out of there, and we’d run. We’d live on the run, if we had to. It’s not the life I want for you, or I would have invited you along with me when I flew away on Buckbeak, but I’d take that before I’d abandon you again.”</p><p>Harry sighs and relaxes as much as he can about something that hasn’t happened yet. “All right. I—but it’s probably going to be a person, right? Not something like my Firebolt.”</p><p>Sirius leans back with a smile. “No, I don’t think they would take objects. Not enough drama for the audience, or the Tournament.” He rolls his eyes, and Harry chuckles.</p><p>In the end, it’s Ron they take. Harry has the feeling that the Headmaster, or the Tournament judges, or whoever made the decision, probably don’t understand enough about Harry’s friendships with the Slytherins, or think that he’ll value Ron more since their argument. Sirius advises Harry on where to get gillyweed—which Harry uses a snake to steal from Snape’s stores—and how to use it. And Harry dives under the water, and uses some of his crueler combat spells to make the merfolk scatter out of the way, and rescues Ron in plenty of time.</p><p>Bringing the girl who turns out to be Delacour’s little sister up, too, was a fleeting impulse, but it turns out to be good news when Delacour tearfully tells him she owes him. Someday, Harry might find an interesting use for that debt.</p><p>*</p><p>Sirius gives him a general drill on the spells and creatures he might encounter in the hedge maze, but the minute Harry’s hand touches the Tri-Wizard Cup, a few heartbeats before Cedric’s could have reached it, and he feels the jerk behind his navel, Harry knows that nothing Sirius did would have readied him for <em>this.</em></p><p>Harry rolls to his feet in a dusky outdoor space. He can see stone angels and leaning crosses around him, and thinks first, <em>Graveyard</em>, and then <em>Voldemort, </em>because of course no one else would be this bloody dramatic.</p><p>The person who hurries towards him, though, his wand out, is Peter Pettigrew.</p><p>Harry feels some of that joy he did when he first saw Sirius transform and thought he was the man who’d betrayed Harry’s parents. Only Pettigrew is fully guilty, and fully a Death Eater, and fully deserves it.</p><p>Harry explodes the earth at his feet, and, as Pettigrew squeaks in alarm, chases after him, aiming to kill and maim and torture. He doesn’t use the Unforgivables because he’d practiced them in private and only been able to manage a weak Imperius Curse, but there are plenty of others that the books from Pansy’s father gave him, and he’s going to use them all.</p><p>As it is, he manages to break Pettigrew’s wand arm and scrape a long strip of skin from his forehead that nearly blinds him before a large snake flings her coils around his legs from behind and trips him.</p><p>Pettigrew whimpers as he binds Harry on a gravestone, but then Harry’s attention is taken fully from him by the ugly baby-figure that Pettigrew brings out. Harry curls his lip and ignores the way that Voldemort tries to taunt him. If this is what “the most powerful Dark wizard of our time” has been reduced to, Harry is bloody glad that he knows lots of magic besides the Dark Arts.</p><p>Pettigrew ends up taking Harry’s blood—when Harry fights, he has the snake lie on top of him to hold him still—and chopping off his own hand to put in the cauldron, after which he drops Voldemort into it. Harry stares at him in disbelief. He didn’t think Pettigrew was insane, just a coward, but now he has to question that idea.</p><p>The creature that rises out of the cauldron doesn’t improve Harry’s opinion of Pettigrew. It’s a monster, with skin as pale as salt, red eyes that blaze like pinpricks of madness, and no nose. Harry can’t lift his hands to touch his own face, but he wants to. What spells are the ones that leave you with no nose, so he can never, ever do them?</p><p>Voldemort steps up to Harry and stares down at him. Harry stares back at him, and the fear and the hatred coil together in his belly and swirl.</p><p>When Voldemort whispers mockingly that he can touch Harry now and reaches down to caress his skin, Harry spits in his face.</p><p>Voldemort tortures him for that. The Cruciatus Curse feels as agonizing in person as it looked when Moody used it on the spider. Harry pants, his head lolling off to the side, as Voldemort calls his Death Eaters and makes a long speech about his immortality.</p><p>
  <em>The Horcruxes.</em>
</p><p>Harry is immediately sure that’s what Voldemort’s talking about. And from the way he’s talking, he probably made more than just the one, the diary. And more than just the one that used to be in Harry.</p><p>Harry clutches the realization to himself that Voldemort is less immortal than he thinks. Harry will die here, but Dumbledore at least knows what the diary is, and probably can hunt down the others. Voldemort will still die in the end.</p><p>But then Voldemort calls the snake, Nagini, back from lying on top of Harry, and <em>unties Harry and gives him back his wand.</em></p><p>Harry can’t believe his luck. He stands there with his wand held loosely in his hand and stares at Voldemort with all the hatred he can muster, because he has to make it look like he’s going to attack Voldemort and die trying instead of run like hell.</p><p>And that means that Voldemort tries to Imperius him into dueling. The curse is harder to shed than Moody’s was, because Voldemort is stronger, but Harry still breaks through it.</p><p>“Bow to Death, Harry—”</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>Harry can see more than one pair of eyes widening behind the Death Eaters’ masks at his calm, loud voice, and a few glances exchanged.</p><p>But then Voldemort tries to cast the Cruciatus Curse at him again, and the Killing Curse, and Harry leaps and runs and dodges, using the monuments as shelter, heading for the discarded Tri-Wizard Cup. He doesn’t know if it’s a Portkey back, but he at least has to take the chance.</p><p>And when he grabs hold of it and sees Voldemort’s wide, furious eyes, he laughs before the whirl of the Portkey takes him back to Hogwarts.</p><p>*</p><p>Finding out that Moody is really Barty Crouch, Jr., and that the Minister doesn’t want to believe Harry is telling the truth about Voldemort’s return, is a shitty note to end the evening on, but no more than that, compared to what he’s already been through so far.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry steps into the Slytherin common room again with his hand on his wand. For some reason, Goyle trailed behind him from the hospital wing, having been waiting outside the doors for him. Harry assumes that this is to herd him in the right direction and make sure he won’t run away before the planned ambush in the common room.</p><p>It <em>has </em>to be an ambush. Harry knows some of these students have family who came to Voldemort’s call yesterday evening. That means he’s no longer safe here, and he’s probably lost Millicent and Draco.</p><p>But instead, he steps into a quiet hush, the only sound the flicker of the fire, despite the number of people gathered on the couches and chairs. Harry glances around warily. Eyes stare back at him.</p><p>What? Do they want him to beg? Harry straightens his back. Voldemort couldn’t make him beg, a bunch of kids his own age and a little older or younger aren’t going to do it.</p><p>“Are the rumors true?” Draco stands up and takes a step towards him, then stops as if he thinks getting too near Harry would be dangerous. <em>Yes, that’s right, </em>Harry thinks, all his muscles coiling. <em>It would be. </em>“Has the Dark Lord returned?”</p><p>“Yes.” Harry lets his voice ring out, anything to conquer the strange silence. “He was in the form of a disfigured <em>baby </em>when he let Peter Pettigrew drop him into a cauldron of potion, and he looks liked a monster when he came out. He had no nose.” Harry smiles at them, mocking. He’ll hold the mocking edge as long as he can. He’ll go down fighting. “He had me tied up, with his snake on top of me, and he used the Cruciatus Curse on me, but he released me from the ropes and tried to use the Imperius to force me to duel him.”</p><p>“What?” someone squeaks off to the side. They don’t sound surprised, though. Harry isn’t blind to how many of the people of his House eavesdrop on places like the hospital wing that aren’t magically secured against it. They probably already know.</p><p>“Yeah.” Harry shrugs. “I shed it like it was nothing. I’m here, and I’m going to fight until Voldemort is <em>dead. </em>So tell that to Daddy.” He stares straight at Draco as he speaks. He knows he saw a flash of white-blond hair in the graveyard, not even that well-hidden by the mask and hood.</p><p>Draco seems to stop beathing for a second. Then he glances around at the watchers, nods, and says, “The Secrecy Spell is upon the common room, invoked before Harry Potter’s entrance, so each word spoken here must be true and cannot be repeated elsewhere. It is to be held sacred.” He draws his wand.</p><p>Harry counters instantly with his. He wonders what they think they’ll gain from this. Will they tell him they hate him? He knows that already, at least for most of them. Do they think they can keep him from repeating the story of Voldemort’s return? Harry already told it to Dumbledore, and he’ll certainly spread it around, even if the Minister won’t.</p><p>But instead, Draco stares at him and sweeps a low bow, then places his wand on the floor.</p><p>“My lord,” he intones.</p><p>Some of the Slytherin students stand up from the chairs and couches and back towards the stairs that lead up to the dormitories, indicating they’re not part of this. But others stand and come forwards, most of the ones in fifth and sixth year, a few in seventh—</p><p>And everyone in fourth except Daphne Greengrass and Vincent Crabbe, who aren’t there, which is probably a clearer signal of their allegiance than anything else.</p><p>Harry watches in stunned silence as their wands rattle to the floor. Some people kneel, but most bow, like Draco does. Millicent does kneel, her eyes wide with delight. Pansy smiles at him, a subtle mocking edge to it, but calls him by the title. Zabini and Nott both bow and speak in the same way Draco does. Tracey Davis is nervous, but she’s there. Goyle comes around in front of him and stares at him with worshipful eyes.</p><p>“Why?” Harry asks simply. “You know what kind of trouble you could get into, following me.”</p><p>“You’re powerful,” Goyle says simply. “You fought the Dark Lord and <em>got away.</em>”</p><p>“I’ve invested too much time in you to give up now,” Pansy says, with a little arch of her eyebrows.</p><p>“I’ve been cultivating you as a leader, and you never noticed,” Zabini murmurs, with a sad shake of his head that makes Harry resolve to keep an eye on him.</p><p>“I want to be on the winning side,” says Nott.</p><p>“I think the Dark Lord’s an idiot,” Tracey blurts, and then claps her hands over her mouth as if she can’t believe she’s said that. Harry no longer doubts the truth spell on the common room.</p><p>“I knew from day one that you had a plan,” Draco says, his smile wide and bright. “I want to follow you.”</p><p>“You’re my friend,” Millicent says with a little shrug, as if that’s simple.</p><p>A chorus of answers rises from the others, mostly a blend of what’s come before, minus the parts about friendship and Voldemort being an idiot. Other people are attracted to power, were convinced by Draco that he had a plan, or want a leader. A few of them are impressed by the fact that he shed the Imperius Curse cast by such a powerful man, and a few seem disgusted by the ritual that returned Voldemort to a body.</p><p>But at last they fall silent, and Harry knows he has to make an answer.</p><p>There’s only one that makes sense, of course, and only one that he <em>wants </em>to give.</p><p>He steps forwards and bends down to retrieve Draco’s wand from the floor, handing it back to him. From the way Draco’s face shines, Harry might have to curb his thoughts about standing too high in the ranks, but that’s all right. It’s still right to give him his wand back first, since he was the first to surrender it.</p><p>“I accept,” Harry says quietly.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the last part of this fic, and the last of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics for this year.</p><p>The lines where Harry taunts Voldemort over the cup Horcrux are inspired by similar lines from Rudyard Kipling's story "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" where the mongoose taunts Nagaina about her eggs.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry stares up at the head table, and connects with the eyes of the newest Defense Against the Dark professor, a woman dressed in pink who’s staring at him with open hatred. Harry hasn’t met her before, but then, his summer was quiet. He stayed with the Dursleys, or at least he did according to most of the adults, and when he roamed around the neighborhood, it was under his Invisibility Cloak.</p><p>They don’t know that Sirius visited almost every day, and took him somewhere they could Apparate. Harry’s now seen the sea, and the Forest of Dean, and the Lake Country, and the Orkneys, and more parts of the Continent than most would give credit to. Sirius always made sure to approach the house in his Animagus form, and to have him back before the Dursleys could miss him. They chatted over the communication mirror whenever Sirius couldn’t make it.</p><p>There’s been no news of Voldemort, on either the Muggle or wizarding news. Oh, except that the <em>Daily Prophet </em>is full of stories calling Harry a delusional liar.</p><p>This woman, Umbridge, must be one of those people who believes that he’s a liar. Harry gives her a bored glance and goes back to eating.</p><p>She’s not going to be a problem. He won’t let her.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry hisses and leans against the door outside Umbridge’s office, staring down at the bloody lines carved on the back of his hand. <em>I must not tell lies </em>stands out in stark letters for a moment before the blood fills them up again.</p><p>Harry closes his eyes. He thought nothing of speaking out against Umbridge in class, just answering calmly and coldly when she asked him directly if he thought Voldemort was back. When she said that they wouldn’t learn practical Defense skills because there was no need for it, Harry laughed.</p><p>He got detention for both, but it seems she’s more annoyed about the “stories” he’s spreading, if the lines she had him write are any indication.</p><p>Harry stands and goes to the private room where he can speak with the snakes. They immediately crowd around him, hissing and outraged, at the sight of the blood.</p><p>“<em>Break into Snape’s Potions stores and take Murtlap Essence for me</em>,” Harry tells one of the stone ones. Then he faces the portrait. “<em>Most of you will now spy on Umbridge for me, and find out something I can use to ruin her.</em>”</p><p>The snakes sway in excitement and set off to do his bidding. Harry leans back on the couch and stares at his hand.</p><p>He could destroy Umbridge now. He knows enough spells. But it would be obvious that it was him.</p><p>And frankly, he wants to ruin her. He wants to blackmail her. He wants to see the <em>Daily Prophet </em>blaring out all the dark secrets of her soul. He wants her to hurt more than he does, twice as much as he does, three time as much as he does.</p><p>For that pain, Harry is willing to struggle through more detentions, and let the cuts on his hand keep happening. He would endure more pain than this to take revenge on those who have hurt him.</p><p>*</p><p>“You need to stop whatever’s doing this to you.”</p><p>Harry takes a deep breath and turns around to stare at Theodore, who followed him when he left the common room. Harry came near to cursing a second-year who decided to taunt him about always having a bandaged hand. He knows that his magic’s been stretching around him and flaring outwards more and more of the time, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. He’s hanging onto his control by his fingernails as it is, waiting for the time when the snakes bring him enough information to destroy Umbridge.</p><p>It’s been four detentions. His hand is swollen and painful most of the time. It’s impacting his casting, and Sirius has been asking more and more pointed and concerned questions through the mirror.</p><p>Harry hasn’t told him. He knows it would bring Sirius down on Umbridge, and if he’s ever to be free, he can’t commit murder.</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean, Theodore,” Harry says, and lets the Parseltongue sibilance dance on the edge of his words, something that frightens most of even his devoutly Slytherin-worshiping followers. The shadows rise around him, snake-shaped and darting out flickering tongues. Theodore swallows, and his eyes swivel around.</p><p>But he doesn’t run. He stands tall and looks into Harry’s eyes.</p><p>“You’re losing your status among the Slytherins,” Theodore says. “We who swore to you can’t betray you, my lord, but the others can, and they <em>will </em>if they think you’re weak. There’s a lot they could do even if they can’t tell anyone about what we said in the common room that day.” He takes a deep breath. “You look weak because you let yourself get wounded and because you’re losing control of your temper and magic.”</p><p>Harry closes his eyes and forces his magic back under control. It wants to explode when he really <em>listens </em>to what Theodore is saying, which he supposes is a good reason to believe it.</p><p>“All right,” he says at last. He’s not willing to hurry up his revenge on Umbridge, so that means he has to find some way to calm and control his temper. Bleed off some of his magic.</p><p>And take revenge on her at the same time. It won’t be <em>satisfying </em>enough for Harry to put his all into it otherwise.</p><p>Thinking about how Umbridge doesn’t want them to practice practical spells gives him an idea, and he smiles and opens his eyes. “I’m going to find a private room in the school where we can all do the kinds of spells that Umbridge doesn’t want us to. It’ll give me something else to focus on and drain some of my excess magic.”</p><p>Theodore looks thrilled. “That’s a great idea, my lord. But how are you going to find such a private room?”</p><p>The snakes can find it for him, Harry’s certain. But he doesn’t intend to reveal that secret to anyone. He winks at Theodore and says, “I have my ways.”</p><p>*</p><p>In the end, the snakes find a room for him on the seventh floor that only appears when you walk past a certain tapestry three times thinking hard of what you want to use it for. Apparently, some of the older portraits remembered it, and the serpents traveled deep into their own memories to uncover those conversations they’d spied on.</p><p>Harry walks back and forth in front of the tapestry of dancing trolls, envisioning a large room with sturdy stone walls and floor, but also padding of some kind they can let down to cushion someone who falls from a spell, and books, and a fireplace.</p><p>When he turns around, the door is gleaming there, a small iron door with a knob that looks like it’s made of bone. Harry turns it, and steps into a room that looks exactly like he’s requested.</p><p>And even some of the things he was thinking of, but didn’t bother to put directly into his plea, such as an enchanted window that shows a starry sky, a calm vista Harry can look at when he feels himself losing control over his magic. He shakes his head in wonder and paces over to the center of the shiny stone floor, hearing his footsteps clicking loudly in the large space.</p><p>Hermione has a secrecy contract prepared, and more people than just him know about Harry’s intention to start a private Defense group. That’s the only reason he’s going to reveal the room to them. Otherwise, he would be tempted to keep it for himself.</p><p>Of course, he knows the secret of the room now, and he’s the only one the snakes told that walking back and forth three times in front of the tapestry is the way to get into it. Why can’t he hold onto the secret and come here to build a private training room just for himself, sometimes?</p><p>Yes. Harry thinks he’ll do that.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry knows some of his followers are annoyed with Umbridge and don’t like the idea of waiting to get revenge on her. But he didn’t expect Blaise to be the one who did something about it, or to do what he did.</p><p>Harry saw Blaise lurking around when he left Umbridge’s class after she assigned him his fifth run of detention, but he didn’t think much of it. He assumed Blaise wanted to talk to him. But then Blaise moved away from him, and from a staircase above, Harry saw him casting a spell on the top stair of a flight Umbridge would have to take to get to the Great Hall. From the wand movements, Blaise cast the Invisible Ice Hex.</p><p>And Umbridge fell down the stairs, and broke her neck.</p><p>Harry started moving the minute he recognized the hex, but he was too late. And then he had to hide out of sight while Umbridge fell and Blaise sounded the alarm, because it would look worse than bad if he was on the scene for her death.</p><p>But he does get there first and pretends to look at Umbridge’s feet for a trace of the hex, even though the Invisible Ice Hex doesn’t really work that way. It dissolves the minute someone touches it, in fact. Slips on it.</p><p>He gives Blaise a narrow-eyed look, and Blaise swallows. Good. At least he knows some of the reason that Harry is displeased with him.</p><p>
  <em>Mine. She was mine to destroy.</em>
</p><p>Harry says nothing about that as the others arrive, though, professors and Madam Pomfrey and members of Umbridge’s Inquisitorial Squad, Ravenclaws and Slytherins from the years above them, none of them sworn to Harry. There’s loud accusations, and more than one person says that Harry must have done it.</p><p>“I promise he didn’t,” Blaise says loudly, looking happy as the attention refocuses on him. “I saw Professor Umbridge fall. She was carrying this huge stack of parchment.” He nods at the papers lying around Umbridge’s body as proof. “I don’t think she could even see the stairs properly. Harry was nowhere around.”</p><p>There’s some grumbling, but most of them seem to buy the story. Harry knows that Professor McGonagall, as Deputy Headmistress, is going to question him anyway. Dumbledore abruptly cut off their lessons at the start of this year and has been avoiding all contact, including eye contact, with Harry. Harry knows why, from the snakes. Dumbledore thinks that Harry still has an active Horcrux inside of him, and that meeting Harry’s eyes will let Voldemort read the secrets out of Dumbledore’s mind through some kind of eyehole-double-Legilimency.</p><p>It’s stupid, but Harry was willing to let it go until he had dealt with Umbridge. It appears that he’ll be talking to Dumbledore sooner than he thought.</p><p>They have a moment of clear space between the departure of most of the people around them to follow Umbridge’s body to the hospital wing, and the arrival of Ministry personnel who want to question Harry. Blaise catches Harry’s eye, and his grin fades. He makes a questioning noise.</p><p>“Blaise,” Harry whispers. “I appreciate, in some ways, what you did.” He reaches out a hand to Blaise’s shoulder, and squeezes, deep and hard, enough to make a bruise appear later. “But don’t do it again.”</p><p>Professor McGonagall starts calling Harry’s name. Harry <em>impresses </em>the point one more time on Blaise, and then stands up and walks away towards the Deputy Headmistress.</p><p>He meant what he said. In some ways, it’s better that no one be able to associate Umbridge’s death with Harry, and that he can even answer under Veritaserum if he has to that he had nothing to do with it.</p><p>In other ways, Harry had the fleeting impulse to hurt Blaise with much more than a bruise.</p><p>
  <em>She was mine to kill.</em>
</p><p>*</p><p>“You wanted to see me, sir?”</p><p>Harry tempers his voice with an effort. The Ministry interrogation about Umbridge’s death the other day was long and complicated and tedious. They had no right to feed him Veritaserum since he’s underage and they had no permission from his guardians—the only time Harry has ever been glad about living with Muggles—but they did everything short of that. Harry put up with it, and now comes a summons from Dumbledore like he’s never been away.</p><p>“Ah, yes, sit down, my dear boy.” Dumbledore beams at him as Harry takes his place on the other side of the desk, but still doesn’t meet his eyes. “You’ll be happy to know that one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters has turned on him, and is willing to feed us information.”</p><p>Harry arches his eyebrows a little. “You mean, besides Snape?” Dumbledore tried to assign Snape to teach Harry Occlumency earlier in the year, and Harry refused point-blank. That’s when Dumbledore started avoiding his eyes.</p><p>“Professor Snape is not a Death Eater, Harry,” Dumbledore says, with the long sigh of someone who wants to be done talking about it.</p><p>“I saw the Dark Mark myself at the end of last year.” Truthfully, Harry knew before that, thanks to the serpents, but it wasn’t the kind of knowledge he could reveal until he had an excuse.</p><p>Dumbledore only sighs a little more. Then he murmurs, “Her name is Bellatrix Lestrange, and she’s one of the Death Eaters that Voldemort broke out of prison over the summer.”</p><p>Harry chokes on air. He still doesn’t eat or drink anything in these private meetings with Dumbledore, as tempting as it sometimes gets. “<em>What</em>? My godfather’s crazy cousin? Are you mental? Do you think anything she says can be trusted? Sirius told me that she was utterly devoted to Voldemort!”</p><p>“We do have to give the people we think are evil another chance.” Dumbledore looks at Harry over his glasses. “And she has already given me valuable information about what Voldemort is seeking in the Department of Mysteries.”</p><p>“You sound as though you knew already.”</p><p>Dumbledore sighs yet again, as if it’s his hobby. Maybe his only one besides redeeming Death Eaters. “There is something he believes can be a weapon against me, against you, against anyone who opposes him. Bellatrix told me that, and now we can set up a trap for him.”</p><p>Harry leans back, considering the wisdom of revealing this particular tidbit to Dumbledore. In the end, he decides to do it, just to see what happens. “The corridor that leads to a door of dark wood? What’s behind it?”</p><p>Dumbledore’s hand jerks so that he flings tea all over himself. “What?” he asks, his voice low and hoarse.</p><p>“I’ve been having dreams of that corridor for months now.” Harry shrugs and stares back at Dumbledore, who’s avoiding his eyes as usual. “I knew they weren’t my own. The emotions feel foreign.”</p><p>“I wish you had continued pursuing Occlumency with Professor Snape, Harry.” Dumbledore’s voice is ancient and sad.</p><p>“<em>He </em>doesn’t. He tells me regularly how stupid and useless I am. He wouldn’t want to be responsible for my failure to, ah, ‘clear my mind.’”</p><p>Dumbledore breathes slowly for a long moment. Harry has the feeling that he’s stunned the man or made him more deeply uncomfortable than he meant to, not that that matters much. He waits, and Dumbledore cleans the spilled tea up with a wave of his wand and shakes his head.</p><p>“I cannot tell you what the weapon is, Harry. Only that it is there. And I trust Bellatrix’s information.”</p><p>Harry lasts through the rest of the meeting, but other than dropping a few cryptic hints about Horcruxes, Dumbledore says nothing of interest. Apparently their private training in jinx spells and the like isn’t to resume.</p><p>Well, that’s all right. Harry is getting enough of a workout with his private Defense group.</p><p>*</p><p>“Can you show us how to do a Patronus Charm?”</p><p>It’s Luna Lovegood, the oddly charming Ravenclaw fourth-year who joined the Defense group a week or so after Harry formed it, asking that question. And it seems as if her words are a signal everyone’s been waiting for, because the chatter falls silent and they all turn to stare at Harry expectantly.</p><p>Harry sighs as he surveys them. A group of his Slytherins are over in the corner, practicing spells with each other as they most often do. They’ll interact with others, but not that many people show enthusiasm about interacting with <em>them</em>.</p><p>Ron and Hermione look hopeful. Zacharias Smith, the Hufflepuff who Harry only admitted to the group because his friends begged, looks bored. Cho and Marietta Edgecombe are standing towards the side of the group as if they want to be elsewhere.</p><p>Marietta thinks Harry doesn’t know about the owls she’s tried to write to the Ministry, revealing the location of the Defense group’s meeting room and the names of the students in it. She must be wondering why she’s not getting a response.</p><p>One of the most useful things Harry ever learned was the charm he put around the windows of the Owlery to make any bird who takes off with letters from certain people lose its memories of who it’s supposed to take the letter to a minute later. They fly in circles for a while, then drop the letter somewhere and return to their perches.</p><p>He based it on a prank spell Dumbledore taught him, too.</p><p>“I don’t know the Patronus Charm,” Harry admits, which makes a few people droop. “But we can learn it together.”</p><p>“You know the theory?” Smith sounds doubtful.</p><p>Harry smiles at him, and Smith flinches back as if he knows that Harry is thinking about picking his teeth with Smith’s bones. Sometimes he’s unexpectedly insightful. “I do. And I know that it can take months to master. But we have months left in the term, still.”</p><p>It does take most of those months, but by near the start of summer, nearly everyone is producing silvery fog, if not the actual shape. Harry is alone in the room one day when he casts it, thinking about the memory of spending Christmas with Sirius—when he got lots of Defense books and brilliant robes—and the silvery tornado forms into the shape of a stalking great cat.</p><p>By researching in a few books, Harry learns that it’s a cougar. Prone to scream in a way that frightens humans and stalk its prey from ambush. One of the most widespread and adaptable large predators in the world.</p><p>Harry thinks it’s appropriate.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry never would have tried riding another hippogriff, but he gets a call from Sirius on his communication mirror near the end of his fifth year.</p><p>Harry smiles, but the smile falls rapidly from his face as he realizes that Sirius has blood splashed across his face, and one of his eyes is swollen shut. His breathing is raspy as he shifts the communication mirror around.</p><p>“What is it?” Harry demands, his mind leaping rapidly between conclusions that don’t make enough sense. Sirius has been living under extraordinary protections at Grimmauld Place, the house where and Harry spent Christmas. Not the Fidelius, because Sirius didn’t trust it after the way that Lily and James got betrayed, but ones that should be strong enough to hold back other enemies.</p><p>“Dumbledore permitted my cousin passage through the wards,” Sirius gasps. “And she attacked me. I don’t know—” There’s a loud cracking noise from behind him, and Sirius nearly drops the mirror. “I don’t know what I can do! How much longer I can hold out. Kreacher prefers to serve her. He’s helping her.”</p><p>“I’m coming. Hang on.”</p><p>Harry shields the mirror, grabs his Invisibility Cloak, and slips out of the dorms. It’s after curfew, but like he gives a fuck. He only takes the Cloak to stop busybodies, like certain prefects, from stopping him and getting in his way.</p><p>He runs to the Forbidden Forest, and finds the herd of hippogriffs not far from Hagrid’s cabin. He’s changed up his Care of Magical Creatures class so that only upper-year students can approach them, and only at the end of the year rather than the beginning. The herd is still nearby from where Hagrid lured them for the fourth-year lesson less than a week ago.</p><p>Harry doesn’t know any other way to get to London fast enough. The Firebolt won’t take him, and he can’t Apparate. He doesn’t know what Floo in the house would be safe.</p><p>But hippogriffs can fly like blazes. And apparently they can orient on certain locations if their rider wishes. Sirius told him that last year, when he got to the Azores after he discussed with Buckbeak where to fly.</p><p>One of the hippogriffs trots towards him, a curious grey female. Harry bows to her and holds it, and after a second, she bows to him and holds out her wings.</p><p>Harry whispers, “Please carry me, beautiful one,” and scrambles onto her back. The address burns in his mind, seared deep. <em>Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Take me to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.</em></p><p>The hippogriff flings herself out of the forest on the strength of his urgency. Harry winds his hands into the feathers springing from her eagle-head, and holds on.</p><p>*</p><p>Sooner than he would have thought possible, Harry and the hippogriff are spiraling down towards the Black townhouse. Harry has her land in the garden behind the house, hoping that no Muggles will look out the windows and see this. But at the moment, he would pay almost any price to keep his godfather safe, including violating the Statute of Secrecy.</p><p>The hippogriff has been snorting uneasily since she caught the scent of the city, and she flies again almost at once. Harry doesn’t care. If everything goes well, then he can take the Floo back to school.</p><p>And if it doesn’t…</p><p>Harry might lose his life in the killing of Bellatrix Lestrange. And then he won’t have to worry about schoolwork again.</p><p>He walks with footsteps softer than snow through the back garden and the back door. The house is dark and still. Harry wonders if that means that the battle is done with. Did Sirius force Bellatrix out? Is he dead? Is she dead? Is Sirius wounded and lying on the floor, recovering?</p><p>Harry moves from room to room, aiming towards the top of the house as he clears one room at a time. He can see broken wood and shattered dishes in the kitchen, but few other traces of battle. No blood. No sign of Kreacher, either.</p><p>Harry steps at last through the doorway of Sirius’s bedroom, and stops.</p><p>Bellatrix Lestrange is standing in the middle of the room, smiling. Harry has no doubt that it’s her, although he’s only ever seen the picture on the Black tapestry. She has wilder hair than Sirius did during his year on the run, and she has bright black eyes, and she’s <em>laughing. </em></p><p>In the corner of the room is Sirius, bloodied and bound. He turns desperate eyes towards Harry.</p><p>Harry already has his wand drawn. He whirls to face Bellatrix, his movements controlled and coordinated. He doesn’t say anything.</p><p>Bellatrix does more than enough talking for both of them.</p><p>“Does the itsy-bitsy Potty baby want his widdle godfather back?” she croons, her wand swinging back and forth in her hand. “Did the iddle-widdle Potty baby run into an ambush?”</p><p>Harry remains silent. Bellatrix chatters some more about her own cleverness in getting Kreacher to open the Floo in the old house for her, and her knowing that Sirius was there at all because Dumbledore told her it was the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Harry burns at that, but still keeps silent.</p><p>Bellatrix loses her patience at last. “Itsy-bitsy Potter baby!” she screams, and points her wand at Sirius. “You beg for his life or he loses it!”</p><p>Harry pays no attention to the words that flow from his lips, begging Bellatrix to spare Sirius. They’re only words. They mean nothing to his pride. What means something to him is Sirius living, and continuing to care for him, perhaps killing the Dursleys for him someday.</p><p>He speaks the words, and Bellatrix laughs and nods along. And then she spins around and launches the Killing Curse at Sirius. He’s dead in seconds.</p><p>Part of Harry freezes, and then shatters, forever.</p><p>He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t make a sound. He simply lunges forwards and curses Bellatrix in the back.</p><p>She drops to the floor with a cry, as the fire he’s engendered in her flesh curls and begins to burn towards her organs. But probably because it’s a Dark curse, she subdues it with a harsh word, and gets up, shaken and burned but not much the worse for wear.</p><p>“You little <em>brat</em>,” she spits, as if it’s the worst word she knows. “<em>Crucio</em>!”</p><p>Harry dodges, and leaps towards her again. His mind is absolutely clear, crystalline, and he lashes out with another spell that he’s been teaching the Defense group, a curling ribbon of cutting power that lashes above Bellatrix’s head and then down like a whip. Unlike most spells, it’s not visible until it strikes, and Bellatrix either doesn’t recognize the incantation or thinks she can dodge it until it lands.</p><p>Harry cuts her right breast off.</p><p>Bellatrix screams in genuine pain then, and probably madness, and horror, and claws at herself, and then grabs hold of something that seems like a button on her robes. The Portkey activates and swishes her away.</p><p>Harry goes up to Sirius and sees how quiet and still his eyes are. Harry wonders for a moment if his parents looked like that, where they lay.</p><p>But he didn’t know them, not really. He knew Sirius, and Sirius is gone now.</p><p>Harry closes his eyes, does one other thing, and goes to Floo Hogwarts.</p><p>*</p><p>Dumbledore tells him off for leaving the school by himself. So does Snape. Professor McGonagall subjects him to an interrogation much like the one the Ministry used in the wake of Umbridge’s death, even though she’s part of the Order of the Phoenix and presumably knew that Sirius was innocent.</p><p>They imply, or outright say in Snape’s case, that Sirius’s death is his fault, that his godfather wouldn’t have died if Harry had got “a responsible adult” to go with him to Grimmauld Place.</p><p>His friends don’t. They come into the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey has placed him for the night, treating him for shock and a Cutting Curse that Bellatrix got through his defenses and Harry didn’t even feel. His friends stand quietly about his bed.</p><p>Then Hermione touches his hand, and leans forwards to hug him. Harry rolls on his side and returns her hug with a quiet, desperate tightness. He wouldn’t, most of the time he’s not this weak, but right now, he <em>needs </em>to.</p><p>Hermione has tears on her face when she pulls back. “I know how much you valued him,” she whispers.</p><p>Ron awkwardly pats Harry’s shoulder. “I know, mate. But you’ll get through this. We’ll help you get through this. Promise.”</p><p>Millicent nods. “Do you want us to help you get revenge on her?”</p><p>Harry runs his tongue around the inside of his mouth. It feels as if his teeth should have loosened from the pressure of his lips, even though that’s ridiculous. “No. I’m going to do it.”</p><p>The good thing about Millicent is that she can listen. She nods and steps back.</p><p>“I know he wasn’t a Death Eater,” Draco murmurs. “My father never reported him at the meetings.” He holds Harry’s eyes. “I’m prepared to do what we discussed, and bring you any information you need.”</p><p>Harry nods. He and Draco began discussing their plans the moment they found out that Draco’s father intends to have him Marked as a Death Eater this summer. They’re going through with it, due to Harry’s ability to affect the snake in the Mark with Parseltongue, and then Draco will report on Voldemort’s movements.</p><p>And Bellatrix’s, too, now.</p><p>“I wish I’d been there.” Greg has an unhappy scowl on his face. He’s a simple sort who lives mostly for guarding Harry. “I wish I could have stopped her.”</p><p>“You weren’t, but it’s appreciated,” Harry says simply, and rolls over to look at Blaise.</p><p>Blaise lifts his hands in the air, a bit pale despite his dark skin. “I won’t touch her. She’s your kill. That’s understood, Harry.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Harry says simply, and glances at Pansy and Theodore.</p><p>Theodore nods a little. “My father hasn’t said anything about me getting Marked. I’ll be leaving if he does. I have no plans to let him sacrifice me to an insane monster.”</p><p>Harry just smiles. Theodore isn’t Draco, who volunteered to go through with the Marking himself. And Harry knows that people forced into something against their will are much less loyal and cooperative than people who are freely going along with his instructions.</p><p>“My father agrees with you.” Pansy lifts her head, radiating concern and sternness like light. “He’ll give you the support you need, and the books that you need.”</p><p>“Thank him for me.” Harry knows that Pansy’s father was a major force behind getting Cornelius Fudge elected. Without that support, then Fudge’s denial of Voldemort’s return, which is still ongoing, is less likely to succeed.</p><p>“I think Crabbe is going to be Marked,” Draco adds in a low voice. “It’s all he can talk about. As if he—as if he’s looking forward to it.”</p><p>“Well, he’s always been a bit of an idiot,” Ron mutters.</p><p>Greg nods fervently. That surprises Harry, but he does recall that he saw Greg with Crabbe fewer times this year, when they always used to be together following Draco around. Now Greg follows Harry around instead.</p><p>There’s a loud sigh, and Madam Pomfrey walks up to the bed, shaking her head and flapping her robes in front of her like a housewife herding chickens. “All right, you lot, I gave you as much time as you could reasonably expect. Get out now, and leave Mr. Potter to his rest.”</p><p>“Yes, Madam Pomfrey,” his friends obediently chorus, but they look at Harry in a way that he knows means they’ll fight to stay if he wants them to.</p><p>Harry shakes his head a little. He could use a chance to think and rest by himself. Obediently, they turn and file out.</p><p>“It’s nice that you have so many people concerned about you,” Madam Pomfrey says, and sighs as she offers him a Calming Draught. “It would be <em>nice </em>if some of the professors in the school were among them.”</p><p>Harry nods, although he doesn’t really agree, and swallows the potion. The only adult he <em>wanted </em>to care about him was Sirius, and he’s gone. But he could use a clear head to think through his position, to decide what he wanted to do next.</p><p>He lies back and thinks about several things. About how best to use his advantages in the upcoming war. About the torture curses he’d like to cast on Bellatrix Lestrange. About the fact that Sirius already told him he would be leaving his house to Harry if he died in the war, and that’ll be a refuge for him this summer, rather than having to live with the Dursleys.</p><p>About the fact that he cast a Preservation Charm on Bellatrix Lestrange’s severed breast, and hid it before anyone else could come through the Floo.</p><p>About what he might do with it.</p><p>*</p><p>The summer before sixth year, and sixth year itself, are honestly a bit of a blur for Harry.</p><p>He stays at Grimmauld Place throughout the summer, unable to bring himself to enter Sirius’s bedroom but having full run of the rest of the house. The first thing he did was bind Kreacher with spells that force him to accept and experience Harry’s emotions during the battle with Bellatrix and Sirius’s death. Kreacher goes gibbering mad within a week, and kills himself. Harry hangs his head on the wall.</p><p>He spends a lot of time with the Black library, too, including books on Horcruxes that he doubts exist anywhere else, and researches the connection that he appears to still share with Voldemort, dreams and visions, despite the fact that the Horcrux in him is gone. The books admit that living Horcruxes could exist, and the removal of a soul-piece from one could leave a hole behind. The hole happened in objects that had a Horcrux removed from them instead of just being destroyed; they were charred and broken, and, if they were magical artifacts, never worked as they had before the removal of the soul-shard.</p><p>Harry does not intend to be charred and broken. And he thinks the hole should probably close with Voldemort’s death.</p><p>For now, he uses the hole to go swimming in the depths of Voldemort’s mind.</p><p>It seems odd, at first, that Voldemort never notices that Harry is there, what with being a great Legilimens and all, but Harry finds the answer to that, too. Even a master Legilimens will have trouble reading the mind of someone similar to himself, or viewing memories that are too similar to his, says one Black library book. It’s one reason that a Legilimens probably won’t try to view memories that he’s part of, in case that distorts his own perspective or leaves him blind to one aspect of the new memories.</p><p>Harry thinks that his hatred, his cruelty, his <em>purpose </em>is probably too close to Voldemort’s for him to feel like an intruder in the monster’s mind.</p><p>He watches Draco’s Marking from inside Voldemort’s mind, and snorts at the glee that rises when Draco promises, in a firm voice, to be the end of Dumbledore. There’s no way that Voldemort can notice Harry’s own glee in the tide of his, or guess its purpose.</p><p>He sees Snape walk into the man’s presence and kneel and kiss his robes, and Harry rejoices a little every time he watches Snape writhe under the Cruciatus.</p><p>He laughs when he sees Bellatrix stumbling around, her chest oddly misshapen, and healing spells having no effect on her due to the curse that Harry used. It’s the beginning of a payment, but it’s not enough.</p><p>And Harry studies, and studies, and studies, and studies. Far more important material, all of it, than will ever end up on the NEWTS.</p><p>*</p><p>The other notable part of the year is that Dumbledore starts giving him lessons on the Horcruxes, while carefully not using that word. And he has a blackened hand that, eventually, he admits to Harry is from the destruction of a ring used for a Horcrux.</p><p>Harry passes along the word to Draco, so that he can do only as much as is necessary to further his mission to kill Dumbledore and keep Voldemort’s favor. There’s no reason for one of Harry’s friends to put himself in danger when the poison from the ring is going to kill Dumbledore anyway.</p><p>Based on the memory that Harry obeys Dumbledore’s instructions to get from the new Professor Slughorn because he’s curious himself, Voldemort’s likely created seven Horcruxes. Or, rather, he meant to create six and keep his soul in his body. He doesn’t know about the one that used to be in Harry.</p><p>Dumbledore never mentions it, either. Now and then he glances at Harry with disquieted eyes, as if he thinks that Harry is going to pick up something he doesn’t want him to pick up, or else not do what he’s told like a good little wind-up toy.</p><p>Harry smiles blandly back, and makes his own notes. Yes, it makes sense that the snake who confronted him in the graveyard is probably another Horcrux. Harry suspects that he’ll have to save that one for last, since Nagini is never far from Voldemort’s side.</p><p>The Slytherin locket and the cup belonging to Helga Hufflepuff also make good candidates. Dumbledore claims to not have any clue where either of them is, but he makes the statement in a firm voice while looking directly into Harry’ s eyes—one of the telltales of a master liar.</p><p>Harry is fairly sure that Dumbledore does know where one of them is, and waits patiently to see if Dumbledore is going to pass any clues on to him about that before he dies.</p><p>The last Horcrux, Dumbledore says he has no clue about. But following the pattern, Harry is fairly certain that it should be an artifact belonging to Rowena Ravenclaw. That would make sense: three Horcruxes personally important to Voldemort—his diary, his snake, his ancestral ring—and three Horcruxes based on Founders’ artifacts—the locket, the cup, and an important artifact to Ravenclaw. It could, of course, be one belonging to Gryffindor, but Harry thinks that’s less likely, as Gryffindor was the Head of Voldemort’s rival House and left only two famous artifacts behind, the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, both firmly in the possession of Hogwarts.</p><p>Luna is the one who volunteers, after a few hours of Harry talking idly about important Ravenclaw artifacts, that her House’s Founder once wore a diadem that supposedly increased her wisdom. Only no one’s seen it for the last thousand years or so.</p><p>Harry at least has that much of a clue, which he doesn’t bother to share with Dumbledore. Fair is as fair does.</p><p>*</p><p>The end of the year is chaos. Draco introduces Death Eaters into the school. Harry makes sure that his friends are out of the way, warned in time. Dumbledore takes Harry to an isolated cave where he claims the locket Horcrux is, but it turns out to be a fake. Harry has to force-feed him poison before they find that out, though.</p><p>(That part, Harry enjoys).</p><p>Snape <em>pretends </em>to kill Dumbledore, or maybe actually does it, but Harry knows from the snakes that it’s on Dumbledore’s orders. And then he chases Snape away from the school, roaring and pretending to swear vengeance for his “mentor’s” death, while Snape snarls at him about using spells from the Half-Blood Prince’s book, a minor (compared to the books from the Black library) but useful treasure Harry discovered earlier in the year.</p><p>Harry responds with a curse that removes Snape’s left ear. He also enjoys the look of shock and hatred he gets before Snape Apparates.</p><p>Draco, who’s been following Snape after being on the top of the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore got offed, pivots briefly on his heel to look at Harry. Harry nods. Draco nods back, and Apparates after Snape.</p><p>It’s a risky move, being in the center of the Death Eaters while bearing Voldemort’s Mark, but Harry does think that Draco can do it. He’s successfully avoided detection so far.</p><p>Harry turns back to the castle, resolved to gather up the fake locket and study the note some more. He has a suspicion, which might only come from his mind being full of Sirius and the Black family at all times, and he wants to see if it works out.</p><p>*</p><p>“This place is awfully gloomy.” Hermione glances around Grimmauld Place and shivers.</p><p>“Well, it’s been hard to keep it clean when I was only here over Christmas and Easter,” Harry murmurs, flicking his wand to get rid of some of the dust and to light candles as they walk through the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and towards the library.</p><p>“Where’s Kreacher?”</p><p>Harry glances back at her. “I didn’t tell you? He was raging at me after I inherited the house, and saying that he wasn’t going to serve anyone who was less than a pureblood. I sent him to work in the kitchen at Hogwarts.” He shrugs. “I would have set him free, but I couldn’t chance him going to Bellatrix.”</p><p>Hermione flinches a little at his tone on the last name, but nods. “That makes sense.”</p><p>Harry takes care to lead her by a different route that doesn’t pass the house-elf heads. There are some things Hermione doesn’t need to know.</p><p>It’s easy enough to find the cabinet of curious, mostly Dark objects that Sirius showed him in happier times, and illuminate the whole of it with a soft charm. Harry began using magic in the house last summer, when he’d decided that he didn’t care if the Ministry expelled him from Hogwarts, and no one ever sent a notification. Maybe there are wards on the house that prevent it. Maybe it’s still registered as a residence where adult wizards and witches live.</p><p>Harry frankly doesn’t care. He’s going to use magic, and he doesn’t give a shit about the archaic laws.</p><p>“Oh, that’s pretty,” Hermione says, as Harry moves a few trinkets and reveals the gleam of the locket. Harry smiles a little. His intuition was right. R.A.B., Regulus Arcturus Black. “Can I wear it?”</p><p>Harry throws a glance at her, a little surprised that she can’t feel the Dark magic beating out of the locket like heat, but sees her eyes are glazed. Maybe she <em>does </em>feel it, but it’s acting as a compulsion instead of repelling her like it should.</p><p>“No, sorry,” Harry says. “It’s cursed pretty heavily.” That’s even true. He gets his wand beneath the locket’s chain and flips it out of the cabinet. “In fact, I’ll probably have to destroy it. It’s what Sirius would have wanted.”</p><p>The mention of Sirius is enough to snap Hermione out of her trance, the way it has been for most of his friends since Sirius’s death. Her face is the picture of remorse as she nods. “Of course, Harry. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t know.”</p><p>Harry made one more trip to the Chamber of Secrets before they left school, and gathered up the same fang that pierced the diary, still lying gleaming and undecayed amid the wreckage of the place. When he stabs it through the heart of the locket and hears the screaming of the wretched thing, he feels nothing but deep satisfaction.</p><p>*</p><p>“You know that if you do this, then lots of people are never going to look at you in the same way again.”</p><p>Harry laughs softly and stretches back against the huge wingback chair that’s in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place, close to the fire. It’s taken a while, but he’s made it as comfortable as it used to be when he stayed here with Sirius. (And put up a permanent illusion around the house-elf heads so that no one can see them. That was an interesting spell he might use in the future).</p><p>“They don’t already hate me?”</p><p>Ron grimaces. “Point.” The stories in the <em>Daily Prophet </em>that Harry is lying have continued, despite numerous Death Eater raids on the homes of prominent Wizengamot politicians and the deaths of several of them. Voldemort has essentially taken over the school, too, appointing <em>Snape </em>Headmaster. Harry supposes that’s the final proof that Voldemort hates children.</p><p>“Come up with a strategy for me, Master Strategist.”</p><p>Ron visibly flushes with pride, while still giving Harry a skeptical glance. “I’m not going to worship you or have whatever fucked-up relationship it is that you have with your Slytherins.”</p><p>Harry smiles a little to hear Ron call them “his” Slytherins. It’s the closest he can come to acknowledging what Theodore and Millicent and Draco and the rest are to him. The spell on the Slytherin common room those two years ago still prevents him from talking about the Lordship ceremony in any detail.</p><p>But that doesn’t matter. “You don’t have to,” Harry says, leaning forwards. “I want you to do what you do best, besides…”</p><p>“Besides what?”</p><p>“Standing with me.”</p><p>Ron reaches out and wrings Harry’s hand hard, once.</p><p>*</p><p>None of his people except Draco go back to Hogwarts that year. The rest are in Grimmauld Place with him, under a Fidelius with Theodore as their Secret Keeper. There are certainly more than enough rooms, and now that all of them are of age, casting magic in the rare cases where they need to make a room bigger or the like is no problem.</p><p>Harry is working on a spell that will let him track down Hufflepuff’s Cup. Draco is very subtly working on Ravenclaw’s diadem, asking questions of the pureblood Ravenclaws who remain in the school. They’ve left the problem of taking care of the snake until later. It’ll take someone who can get close to Voldemort, and right now, Draco, while still their best choice, isn’t favored enough to do that.</p><p>(Harry gave Draco Sirius’s mirror because it’s the only secure way they can communicate with each other. At least he managed to impress on Draco the consequences that would follow from a breaking of that mirror).</p><p>“My lord?”</p><p>Harry glances up from his notes, and smiles a little at the sight of Greg in the doorway. “What is it, Greg?”</p><p>“I—I just needed to know.” Greg licks his lips. “I got an owl from Vincent yesterday. He said that he didn’t understand why I was gone from the school and I should be there and taking the Dark Mark. I’m doing the <em>right </em>thing by being here with you, aren’t I?”</p><p>Harry feels his heart swell a little. Sometimes he finds Greg’s single-minded devotion trying, but on the other hand, it’s good to know that there’s one person he doesn’t have to struggle to reassure.</p><p>“Yes, you are,” Harry says. “You know that Draco can only be close to the Dark Lord because there’s no other way he can please his parents and make sure <em>he </em>doesn’t suspect him.” Voldemort’s put a Taboo on his name, the bastard, so Harry has to refer to him other ways. “The Dark Lord would kill you for being away from him for even so short a time. I, on the other hand, want to protect you. And you don’t want to leave me and Draco and the others, do you?”</p><p>“No.” Greg’s brow is already clearing, and he gives a nod to Harry that’s also a half-bow. “Thank you for clearing that up for me, my lord.”</p><p>“Any time,” Harry says warmly.</p><p>*</p><p>When Harry finally manages to use a spell to track the Hufflepuff Cup to its resting place in the Gringotts vault of Bellatrix Lestrange—something he only knows because he got an image of the vault door to appear in front of him, and Ron’s brother Bill, still working in the bank, was able to tell them who it belonged to—then he has to come up with a way to access it.</p><p>And he does. But the magic required is so Dark that Theodore is the only one willing to explore it with him. Or come to the bank with him once Harry determines what he has to do.</p><p>“You don’t mind what I’m doing?” Harry asks as he places the severed piece of Bellatrix’s breast in the mold that he’s constructed.</p><p>“What does <em>minding </em>and <em>not minding </em>have to do with any of this?” Theodore leans against the door of the potions lab, watching with keen interest as the Preservation-Charm-touched flesh writhes and shapes itself. “This is war. The Dark Lord threatens our existence. He’s threatened your existence since the moment you were <em>born</em>, for a reason that I still don’t know about.”</p><p>Harry shrugs. He’s not entirely sure, but he’s come to know that the Department of Mysteries holds prophecies. He supposes that might be the reason. Dumbledore never saw fit to share the exact reason with him, though. “That’s the way I feel, too,” he says, and jerks the newly-formed flesh key that should grant them access to Bellatrix’s vault out of the mold. “But I think it’s a step too far for Ron and Hermione. They still like to think of themselves as <em>good </em>people.”</p><p>“And Greg is just too gentle for this, much as I hate to say it,” Theodore mutters, his eyes locked on the key with fascination. “And Blaise…you realize that he’s writing to his mother behind your back?”</p><p>“He thinks I don’t know. It’s sort of cute.” Harry smiles a little as he tucks the key into the specially-built wallet he’s prepared. When they come back, he <em>does </em>have a lesson to teach Blaise that Blaise is not going to enjoy.</p><p>“I am kind of surprised you didn’t ask Millie or Pansy, though.”</p><p>Harry sighs. “Pansy is still researching the binding spell we’ll need, and she doesn’t deal well with being pulled away from that sort of thing and asked to take on another project. Millicent could go with us, but I think she has some of the same gentleness problem as Greg. She practically burst into tears when I told her what I intended to do.”</p><p>Theodore blinks. “She <em>did</em>?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Harry shrugs. “It’s all right. Bill’s going to get us in, and the rest is <em>easy.</em>”</p><p>*</p><p>It isn’t easy. But they do, in fact, get into the bank with Bill’s help, introduced as regular customers who need to check on Theodore’s vault, and they Imperius the goblin who drives the cart to take them where they need to go. They get to Bellatrix’s vault and open the door with the key.</p><p>The goblins seem to suspect something is up on the way out of the bank, but they don’t actually attack. Harry keeps his eyes straight ahead.</p><p>He doesn’t have that many Galleons left in the trust vault, and he has a large store at home, the money that Sirius cleaned out of his own vault when he thought the Ministry might try to track him down by keeping a watch on his transactions. If the goblins do prevent him from coming back here again, Harry has enough to survive.</p><p>And now they have the cup, and they’re putting together the last parts of the plan they’ll need to confront Voldemort on the battlefield. Harry would really like it if they could destroy the last Horcrux from Voldemort, either the cup or the diadem or the snake depending on how it falls out, in front of him.</p><p>He would like Voldemort to know that he’s mortal before he dies.</p><p>*</p><p>“You have to know that the binding spell we’re going to be using is a precursor to anti-Apparition spells. But because they focus on one particular person, and prevent them from leaving an area no matter what, they were banned as Dark centuries ago.”</p><p>Harry stares into Pansy’s eyes as they sit in the Black library. “I know that. What is so important that I have to study them separately?”</p><p>Pansy grimaces and leans forwards over the table separating them. Her voice is so quiet that Harry has to strain to hear her above the crackle of the fire. “These spells require <em>intimate </em>knowledge of the target. They were often used to imprison ex-lovers. I don’t know how you can use them on the Dark Lord.”</p><p>Harry has to smile. “I’ve been inside his mind. We share a link of sorts, forged the night that he tried to kill me.”</p><p>“Which time?” Pansy snaps, even though she looks a little awed.</p><p>Harry laughs. No matter what happens, Pansy remains intensely practical. He does like that about her. “The first time.” He doesn’t intend to tell her about the Horcrux he once carried, or the hole left behind by it, in any detail, but this is enough to be going on with. “My hatred is so similar to his that he never even knew I was in his head. I can tell you some of his memories, and what he hates, and what he enjoys. Will that be enough?”</p><p>“Yes,” Pansy says, sounding a little dazed. “Yes, that will be enough.”</p><p>She eyes him cautiously as they discuss how to prepare the spell that will prevent Voldemort from fleeting the battleground, which they’ve already chosen as Hogwarts. Harry frankly likes that caution, too.</p><p>*</p><p>“Blaise.”</p><p>Blaise whirls around, dropping the letter he was about to post on the floor of the Owlery. Harry leans on the doorframe and stares at him. Blaise hesitates, then says, “This isn’t what it looks like.”</p><p>“Oh, this isn’t another letter to your dear darling mother putting everything down as <em>insurance </em>in case I Memory Charm you or the like?”</p><p>Blaise backs up a step. He visibly wants to ask how Harry knows that, but checks himself. Harry stands up straight and considers Blaise against the background of the soft, nervous hooting of the owls.</p><p>In truth, another charm like the one that Harry once put on the Hogwarts Owlery’s windows has the birds bring him the letter first, so that he can read it and decide whether to send it on or not. He’s only let a few of Blaise’s messages through.</p><p>“I wasn’t betraying you,” Blaise whispers. “I swear. The owls will never be captured by the Dark Lord’s forces. She would never join him.”</p><p>“She might if she saw profit in it.” Harry takes a slow step forwards. “I told you once before, Blaise, that I don’t appreciate it when you <em>interfere </em>like this.”</p><p>Blaise shivers. “You didn’t specifically say that Umbridge was your kill or that I shouldn’t send post to my mother…”</p><p>“Because I thought you would be smart enough to deduce it on your own.” Harry shakes his head. “And I do have a punishment for you, Blaise, little as I liked the idea of it at first. But twice is no coincidence.” He draws his wand and begins to make the intricate motions he needs, while hissing the incantation in Parseltongue.</p><p>“My lord…”</p><p>Blaise only calls him that when he’s desperate for something to stop happening. Harry looks him dead in the eye and keeps casting.</p><p>In the end, an ice-blue serpent with white stripes forms on the floor of the Owlery. With a near-soundless rush of wings, the owls take flight in fear. The serpent moves a few inches forwards, and then stops and glances back at Harry.</p><p>“<em>Bite him and ensure his loyalty,</em>” Harry commands it, then stares at Blaise as the snake crosses the last distance between it and the other boy. “Do you know what this snake will do?”</p><p>“No, my lord.” Blaise looks close to fainting.</p><p>“Bite you and inject a venom into your body that will kill you if you ever think about betraying me again.” Harry smiles pleasantly. “And I do mean <em>think</em>. Actions aren’t enough, not anymore, not when I need to correct a fault in your thinking process.”</p><p>Blaise bows his head and keeps himself there as the snake wriggles closer. “Thank you for your mercy, my lord.” Then he screams as the snake bites.</p><p>Harry watches from the frozen part of him that showed up when Sirius died, and nods when the snake is done. There’s a reminder, a blue scar on Blaise’s arm, but it won’t do anything until and unless he thinks about betraying Harry again.</p><p>“Don’t make me feel like a fool for letting you live,” Harry says casually over his shoulder as he aims for the entrance to the Owlery.</p><p>“No,” Blaise whispers, still on his knees, shaking from the pain. “No, I won’t.”</p><p>*</p><p>Draco does finally manage to charm the story of Ravenclaw’s diadem in more detail from a few of the Ravenclaws—including Luna Lovegood, who stayed at the school and apparently escaped targeting by the Carrows because they never knew that she was part of Harry’s private Defense group—and provides Harry with a detailed description of it. Harry uses the detailed description to cast a second tracking charm.</p><p>He has to cast it again and again. Each time, the vision widens a little, but it still doesn’t give him much to go on at first. The diadem hangs on an ugly bust…which stands on top of a cabinet…which is next to a broken armchair…which is next to bare stone walls…</p><p>Harry vents to Draco about his frustrations through the communication mirror, only to have Draco’s eyes widen and a small laugh escape his lips.</p><p>“But I know that cabinet, my lord,” he says. “That’s the Vanishing Cabinet I brought the Death Eaters through last year. It’s in a version of the room that we held our defense group in. It’s full of rubbish and broken things.”</p><p>Harry grins, and can feel his lips stretching in victory. “Don’t go after it, Draco. I don’t know what a Horcrux like that would do to an unprotected mind. The diary managed to charm someone into writing in it. I think the diadem would try to charm someone into wearing it.”</p><p>“My lord.” Draco bows his head, flushed with triumph.</p><p>“But, Draco? Very well done.”</p><p>And Draco’s flush at that is even brighter, and Harry closes the mirror with a smile and goes to talk to Ron.</p><p>Their strategy moves into its endgame.</p><p>*</p><p>Summoning Voldemort to Hogwarts turns out to be simple enough. Harry sends him a letter full of “coy” references to diadems and cups and lockets, and that makes Voldemort reply in a maddened fashion on the front page of the <em>Daily Prophet</em>, threatening to execute every non-Death Eater student at Hogwarts unless Harry comes there on such and such a date.</p><p>And so they go, armed with their wands and memorized spells and shrunken brooms and the basilisk fang. Harry sends Ron and Hermione in through the tunnel that leads from Honeydukes, with instructions to go down to the second-floor girls’ bathroom, where one of the carved snakes is waiting to open the way to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry suspects they’re going to need the second basilisk fang, since he’ll probably have to give the one he carries to Draco when he gets close to the snake.</p><p>Harry then casts the binding spell around the grounds of Hogwarts, sitting on his broom outside the window of Gryffindor Tower to get the height he needs and visualizing the pitch, the Forbidden Forest, the lake, Hagrid’s hut, and every other feature he’s come to know so well before he casts. Voldemort will be able to Apparate or Portkey in, but he won’t be leaving.</p><p>He’s barely dropped his arms from casting the spell when the communication mirror in his pocket glows. Harry frowns as he takes it out. This isn’t part of their strategy.</p><p>Draco’s face is there, but his voice is so low Harry knows that he’s in company. “My lord, the Dark Lord is sending Crabbe and me to the Hidden Room.”</p><p><em>To retrieve the diadem. </em>He doesn’t need to say it. Harry nods and closes the mirror. Then he turns and nods to the others, who are hovering nearby on brooms of their own, the better to be faster and maneuverable around the grounds when the Death Eaters begin to arrive.</p><p>“Ready to fly?” he asks them.</p><p>*</p><p>Retrieving the diadem from the Hidden Room doesn’t go at all like Harry thought it would, despite it being easy enough to find on top of its bust and cabinet once Harry knows what he’s looking for. Crabbe and Draco show up faster than Harry looked for, and Draco takes one look at Harry and backs out of the room.</p><p>Draco does mouth one word before he goes. <em>Fiendfyre.</em></p><p>Harry smiles, delighted. Fiendfyre is a proven way to destroy Horcruxes, he knows that much from his research, but none of them ever managed to master the spell enough to count on it. Their one big experiment almost burned down Grimmauld Place.</p><p>But Crabbe knows how to cast Fiendfyre. And when they can close it in a magical room and outfly it, it won’t matter if they can control it.</p><p>It certainly won’t matter what happens to Crabbe.</p><p>Crabbe is so easy to taunt, so easy to fool. Harry gets him to believe that the diadem, which of course belongs to the Dark Lord, has an enchantment on it that can only be broken by Fiendfyre, and then casts the thing into the flames when Crabbe casts the spell.</p><p>They circle above the flames, Millicent spitting at Crabbe when he looks to her in what might be a desperate plea for help. They dive through the door of the room, and Harry looks back—</p><p>In time to see the green flash of what must be the Killing Curse, as Crabbe kills himself rather than face death by Fiendfyre.</p><p>Harry shrugs. As if it matters.</p><p>*</p><p>Outside the Hidden Room, Harry places the basilisk fang in Draco’s hand, and murmurs, “The snake. Whatever you have to do.”</p><p>Draco nods, his eyes brilliant. And then he runs to “deliver the news” about the diadem and Crabbe’s death to Voldemort.</p><p>Harry intercepts Ron and Hermione on the fifth floor. They proudly present the second basilisk fang to him, and Harry hefts it and smiles. He can feel the deadly potency of the venom straining to get out of the fang and mark its way into his flesh. This time, it would kill him, not having a Horcrux to feast on.</p><p>But it can’t get out of the fang without help. And Harry is going to use it to kill the cup, and he is master of it.</p><p>There is an exquisite pleasure in mastery.</p><p>*</p><p>Of all the places that Harry expected to track Voldemort, he didn’t expect to find him in the Shrieking Shack.</p><p>But that’s where his tracking spell led him, and Harry wonders if he’s going to have to kill Voldemort here, without an audience. No, wait, an audience of one person. Two people. Nagini coils on the floor, and Snape kneels in front of Voldemort.</p><p>No, Harry doesn’t want it to happen here. It would be too easy for the Death Eaters to construct conspiracy theories about Voldemort still being alive if he does, and Harry doesn’t know that he could kill the snake, and the cup, and Voldemort, in one move.</p><p>He wants their strategy to work, besides. They spent so much time on it. With a sigh, Harry starts to ease back into the tunnel.</p><p>Then Voldemort’s rambling turns to accusing Snape to being the Master of the Elder Wand. Harry blinks in surprise as he remembers the fairy tale of the Three Brothers, and Draco mentioning in passing that Voldemort appeared to be obsessed with the Elder Wand. He thinks he needs the most powerful wand in the world to face Harry.</p><p>And he <em>does </em>have a wand that might be elder wood, and certainly isn’t the yew one, turning and turning in his hands. But it won’t work for him, and he thinks Snape is the reason why, since the wand belonged to Dumbledore and Snape conquered Dumbledore and must have won the wand’s allegiance by killing him.</p><p><em>But didn’t Draco actually disarm Dumbledore…</em>? Harry has to conceal a muffled, hilarious laugh as he crouches under the Invisibility Cloak and watches Voldemort unleash Nagini on Snape. When Snape lies on the floor with blood running from his neck, Voldemort turns, blasts a hole in the wall, and departs with the snake.</p><p>Harry crouches down next to Snape, staring at him. He could certainly save him. This is a snakebite, and Harry ought to know how to heal one.</p><p>But should he?</p><p>Then Harry thinks of one very good reason why he should. And his smile is dark as he goes to work.</p><p>*</p><p>“VOLDEMORT!”</p><p>Harry’s shout rings across the battlefield, and turns every head there.</p><p>Greg and Millicent have chopped their way through the Death Eater ranks, getting them close enough to be heard. Draco is standing beside Voldemort, his eyes wide with excitement. Nagini curls between the two of them, her head uplifted and her tongue flickering back and forth. Harry thinks he can see a trace of Snape’s blood on her fangs.</p><p>“Harry Potter.” Voldemort says the name like a curse, like a prayer. “You are—”</p><p>He cuts off as Harry holds up Hufflepuff’s cup, and smiles.</p><p>At the same moment, he nods to Draco and Blaise, and they strike, perfectly in unison. Draco stabs the basilisk fang deep into Nagini’s neck, and then beheads her with a Cutting Curse as she shrieks and struggles. Blaise, who begged for the privilege of wounding Voldemort to make up for the letters he sent to his mother, casts a spell that releases a glittering chain of white lightning into Voldemort.</p><p>He swore it would wound Voldemort. Harry didn’t know if he should believe him. But, in fact, that is what happens. Voldemort shrieks like his dying snake, leaning over to the side, cut almost in half.</p><p>Blaise and Draco retreat in haste. Harry drops the cup on the ground and lifts the basilisk fang above it.</p><p>“<em>I destroyed the locket last summer,</em>” Harry says casually, “<em>and the diary in my second year. Dumbledore destroyed the ring the summer before last. You know the fate of the diadem and the snake. How much for the last Horcrux, Voldemort? For the last—the very last—of your immortality anchors</em>?”</p><p>Voldemort swallows, trying to look as if he would spare Harry if he spared the cup, Harry’s certain. “<em>Give it to me</em>,” he says hoarsely. “<em>I will swear to spare you if you give it to me.</em>”</p><p>Harry laughs, and brings the basilisk fang down on the cup.</p><p>Voldemort screams along with the dark mist that rises from it, and starts to inch backwards. But Blaise’s curse has cut him too deeply, and he has to pause and deal with it.</p><p>Into the gap, screaming the way she did when Harry cut off her breast, Bellatrix Lestrange hurtles.</p><p>It really is too good. Harry’s heart beats with gladness as he launches the spell that will behead her, and the curse behind it that will preserve her head in a living state so that he can do whatever he likes with it. As Bellatrix’s body falls one way and her head the other, Harry nods to Millicent, and she dodges towards it and scoops it up.</p><p>And Theodore smiles and strolls forwards as Harry draws the hood of the Invisibility Cloak around his head and fades from view.</p><p>“I’m so glad that I ignored my father and chose not to follow you,” Theodore says casually, eyeing Voldemort with just the right amount of disdain. “<em>Look </em>at you. Almost cut in half by a seventeen-year-old. You can’t protect your followers, you can’t protect your pet snake, you can’t even kill a <em>baby</em>. Why is anyone afraid of you again?”</p><p>He shakes his head, and Voldemort answers with a howl of rage. Harry chuckles inwardly as he gets behind him. When he asked for someone to distract Voldemort’s attention from him after the destruction of the cup Horcrux, Theodore immediately volunteered. Apparently these are things he’s been wanting to say to Voldemort for—a while.</p><p>Some of the Death Eaters dash forwards and try to rescue their Lord. Millicent, Greg, Hermione, Ron, Blaise, Pansy, and Draco are all in their way, and the air flashes with the spells that Harry’s taught them.</p><p>From hiding, like the “cowardly, dishonorable” Slytherin Dumbledore always thought him, and as he’s not sure he would have been able to do if Voldemort had been able to see it coming and counter it, Harry launches the spell he’s chosen to end the murderer of his parents.</p><p>It hits Voldemort and spreads in through his back, liquefying his organs. He begins to scream and doesn’t stop. Harry drops his hood again and turns to watch him, wondering if Voldemort will turn and see him as he dies, just a hovering face in the air. That might be its own brand of horror.</p><p>But that doesn’t happen. Harry’s spell, combined with Blaise’s, is too much for a mortal Voldemort to overcome, the way Blaise promised it would be when he discussed being the one to hit Voldemort with the curse. The writhing, snake-like creature goes up with a flash of blood and gore, burning where it falls. Harry uses another fire curse just to make sure.</p><p>When he glances up, the Death Eaters are already fleeing. Harry lets them go. He needs a few of them to hunt down in his old age.</p><p>And now, he has a visit to make.</p><p>*</p><p>“Welcome back, sir.”</p><p>It’s hilarious how Snape flinches and jumps when he comes awake. He grips the blankets as if he thinks that he can take them up and fling them like a weapon. Harry grins inwardly and lounges back in the chair next to the bed. Yes, he thought about leaving Snape to die, but this is a much more drawn-out revenge than he’ll be able to take on anyone else but Bellatrix.</p><p>Snape works through his coughing, and his glaring. Harry enjoys the first and endures the other, and finally Snape gets to the point where he can speak.</p><p>“What are you doing here, Potter?”</p><p>Of course, Harry knows why Snape is asking that question. The snakes <em>did </em>tell him a lot about the conversations between Snape and Dumbledore, and what they assumed Harry would have to do to get rid of the Horcrux in his head.</p><p>“I lost the Horcrux when I was much younger.”</p><p>Snape’s eyes go wider than they’ve probably been in his life. “What?”</p><p>“When I destroyed the diary in my second year.” Harry leans back and smiles, just a little, at the little noise that Snape can’t stop from escaping him at that point. “I got bitten by the basilisk, and the venom slashed through me and destroyed the Horcrux in me. I lied about being healed by the phoenix tears. I was never in danger, not when the venom actually <em>preferred </em>to destroy something like the Horcrux. It would have made better prey for the basilisk. More delicate prey.”</p><p>“But—how did you know what it was called? Or what it did?” Snape is half-choking, and Harry doesn’t think it’s because of his mostly-healed throat-wound.</p><p>“When the shade of Tom Riddle saw that I wasn’t dying, he <em>broke</em>,” Harry says, and Snape jumps at his tone. “He already knew what I was, apparently, from the feel of me when I touched the diary. He told me about Horcruxes and that I was one, and that he was, too. There was no one reason why we couldn’t ally, he said. Two smaller pieces of one greater being.”</p><p>“And then what happened?”</p><p>Harry smiles, because he has to, at the way Snape is leaning forwards. “I stabbed the basilisk fang through the diary anyway, and watched as Tom Riddle was destroyed, the way he always should have been.”</p><p>“But you retained Parseltongue,” Snape says, and squints at the scar on Harry’s forehead.</p><p>Harry shrugs, although he’s a little impressed despite himself that Snape apparently never bought the lie Dumbledore spread around about Harry losing his Parseltongue after that. “The Headmaster had a theory that I got it from the Horcrux, but that was just a theory. It turns out to have always been in me. With how common the hatred for Parseltongue is, maybe a lot of my ancestors were Parselmouths and just hid it.”</p><p>“As if a Potter would be that intelligent.”</p><p>“More intelligent than you would believe.” Harry chills his tone, making Snape flinch. <em>Good. He should understand what the future will be like.</em> “I used snakes a lot, you know. Real ones, carved ones, painted ones. I knew all about your plot with the Headmaster to make me walk to my death. Neither of you noticed that a snake had replaced Dippet in one of those portraits in his office and was listening to you.”</p><p>It’s something of a sacrifice to tell Snape about the snakes, but not much of one. The time is coming very soon when Harry won’t be a student anymore, and thus he won’t be able to command the snakes of Hogwarts. And unless he’s very much mistaken, Snape won’t be a professor for much longer if he has a choice.</p><p>Snape stares at him. “You—you had a connection to the Dark Lord. Or why would he be able to send visions through it to you?”</p><p>“That was the hole left by the Horcrux, not the Horcrux itself. It didn’t close until I killed him.”</p><p>“How did you kill him?” Snape is whispering, and looks annoyed with himself for the fact, but also as if he can’t stop. That weakness is everything Harry has always wanted to see on his face.</p><p>Harry lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “I destroyed his last Horcrux in front of him. The cup. Hermione and Ron fetched a basilisk fang from the Chamber, and I got Draco to behead his snake. He was the only one who could get close enough.”</p><p>“Draco Malfoy is a Marked Death Eater.”</p><p>“Oh, dear. And you still doubt my Parseltongue? That a powerful Parselmouth couldn’t convince the snake in his Mark to work for me instead of the master who brought it into being in blood and pain? He’s been mine since first year, through his own decision that I was up to something, and once he realized that his father intended to brand him and sell him as a slave, he was even more mine.”</p><p>And that <em>is </em>true, except perhaps the way that Draco was his from first year. Although Harry will maintain that Draco <em>made </em>himself Harry’s with his obsession with him. If he had never thought there was a grand plan, would they be sitting here?</p><p>Perhaps not. Harry might have been mostly a Gryffindor and have trod Dumbledore’s path.</p><p>Not that he’ll be thanking Draco for it. His minion has a swollen-enough head as it is.</p><p>Snape hesitates, shrinks away from him, and then seems to brace himself. “You were telling me how you killed the Dark Lord.”</p><p>“Yes, I was.” Harry looks up and away for a moment, savoring the memory. “He went mad, essentially, when he realized he was mortal. Well, madder. He tried to flee. But I’d already used binding spells around the battlefield to make sure he couldn’t—”</p><p>“How did you learn those?” Snape demands, and starts coughing again. Harry patiently waits out the fit. He wants Snape to hear <em>everything</em>, to savor <em>everything.<br/></em></p><p>“Pansy,” Harry says, and lets Snape see the carelessness of his shrug. “Her father’s library. Then Gregory and Millicent fought for me against the Death Eaters, and Blaise launched a spell that wounded Voldemort.” Snape clutches at his arm, which makes Harry want to sneer—Draco never reacted that badly to the pain from Voldemort’s name—but he keeps talking. “I don’t even want to know where he got it. Theodore distracted the bastard by taunting him and reminding him that he hadn’t followed his father’s footsteps into the Death Eaters while I crept up behind him and stabbed him in the back with a curse that liquefied his organs.”</p><p>Snape remains silent for a long moment, and finally says, “That is not the way I expected you to fight,” just as Harry starts to stand, thinking he’ll have to create a moment to reveal the rest of what he wants to reveal.</p><p>Harry turns to look at him, and finally, <em>finally </em>lets the hatred surface. Snape flinches back from him harder than ever.</p><p>It’s so sweet that it’s hard for Harry to speak. But he has to, to complete his revenge.</p><p>“You were intending to have me march to my death. You made my life hell every day in Potions because of your grudge against a <em>dead </em>man I can’t even remember, while you refused to take my part against any Slytherin who tried to hurt me because ‘Slytherins stick together.’ Not something you remembered when <em>I </em>was the Slytherin in question, of course. I studied defensive spells on my own because our Defense professors were bloody <em>useless</em>, and you wouldn’t let me even cast in class when it was your turn. I put up with Dumbledore making constant little comments about how I couldn’t trust Draco, or Millicent, or Pansy, or <em>any </em>of them, and acting like my friendships with Ron and Hermione were corrupting them. I lost Sirius, and everyone except my friends told me it was my fault, even though <em>Dumbledore </em>was the one who believed <em>Bellatrix Lestrange </em>when she came to him and pretended to have repented. Every adult I knew sent me back to a hell every summer. I was <em>on my own</em>, and every one of them thought I wasn’t a real Gryffindor <em>or </em>a real Slytherin.”</p><p>Harry cuts himself off then, pretending to be so deeply-affected he’s about to lose his temper. Let Snape still underestimate him, if he ever comes against him again. But Harry doesn’t think he will, not after the revelation he still has to give. Harry’s just too used to planning two steps ahead to give it up now.</p><p>He glances away, and continues, “I won anyway. Despite you. Despite Dumbledore. Despite Bellatrix.” He smiles, to get to see Snape’s horror. “Whom I beheaded on the battlefield. That felt bloody good.”</p><p>Snape touches the wound on his neck. “How did I survive?”</p><p>“I found you in time, and healed Nagini’s bite.” Harry has to snort at the look on Snape’s face. “The spells I learned on my own, and you think I never learned ones that could heal a snakebite? Being a Parselmouth helped as well, of course.”</p><p>“Why?” Snape breathes. “Why did you save me, if you hate me?”</p><p><em>Here it is. Here’s the part he’ll hate most. </em>Harry steps forwards and stares at Snape.</p><p>“Partially for my friends,” he says, and he’s not lying. “There are still some Slytherins you were a good Head of House for, and you turned some of them from the Death Eaters’ path. I reckon you can go on doing that in the future, standing up for them against the common bigotry and leading them away from the temptation of Dark Arts. And they didn’t need the grief of your death, little as they would have had to grieve for if they really knew you.”</p><p>“Partially—that. And partially what?”</p><p>Harry smiles. It’s the first real smile he’s ever given Snape, and it freezes the man. As well it should.</p><p>“My father saved your life, and that meant you owed me a debt by inheritance,” he says. “But you paid that back by saving my life in first year when I might have died after I burned Quirrell. <em>Now </em>you owe <em>me </em>a debt.</p><p>“I want you to live a very long, long time, Snape. And know that you breathe by my grace. <em>Every day</em>.”</p><p>Harry turns and stalks out of the hospital wing. He can feel Snape falling to pieces behind him, but if he stays he’ll laugh, and that’ll let Snape recover some ground.</p><p>Harry doesn’t want him to. He wants to keep Snape under his thumb for every day for the rest of his life.</p><p>Harry leans on the wall outside the hospital wing and breathes out slowly. He can hear distant screams, still, as wounded from the battle are treated. But he needs this moment to ride out the last of his immediate revenge, and reflect on how good it feels.</p><p>Is this how sex feels? He’s never had it. Some people say it’s really good</p><p><em>I get to find out, now, </em>Harry reminds himself, as he stands up and starts walking towards where his friends wait. <em>Life can’t be all tormenting Bellatrix’s head with memories of when her lord fell. </em></p><p><em>But I don’t know for sure what comes next. I don’t know what a normal life is like.</em><br/><br/>Harry smiles. He thinks that, for a certain dose of “normal,” he’ll enjoy finding out.</p><p>But for now, he has a head to torment.</p><p>
  <b>The End. </b>
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